4th International Family Violence Research Conference
Paula Martin
Family Violence Unit
Social Policy Agency
In July of this year I attended the 4th International Family Violence Research Conference held at the University of New Hampshire, on the east coast of the United States. The conference aimed to bring together researchers from around the world who specialise in family violence to present and discuss critical issues in family violence research. Methodological, theoretical and ethical issues were all on the agenda. It is especially important in a field so prone to myths and half-truths to be able to spend time with people discussing the fine details of their research and to have an opportunity to look carefully at methodologies and underlying assumptions.
Gaylor Margolin, an opening speaker, discussed the growing literature on the effects on children of exposure to violence. We are often led to believe that exposure to violence leads almost directly to being a violent adult. In fact, the process is far more complex than that and a range of possible outcomes, cognitive, emotional, developmental and behavioural, have been identified. Sometimes no effects will be observed, sometimes they will be turned inwards and sometimes they will be manifested in violence towards others. The simplistic theory that children will invariably model violence they observe needs to be challenged and the beauty of this conference was that it allowed room for these discussions to occur.
I will discuss some of the topics which were of particular interest or relevance to New Zealand but this is only a fraction of what was discussed. A full set of abstracts of papers presented, plus a number of papers, are available for those who may have an interest in other areas.
Coordination and interagency approaches. One of the big issues being dealt with in New Zealand currently, at both the level of policy and practice, is that of coordination of family violence initiatives and services. At the time of the conference, the evaluation of the Hamilton Abuse Intervention Pilot Project (HAIPP) had just been released and officials and practitioners alike were grappling with the implications of its findings.
The HAIPP model was based very closely on an intervention project in Duluth, USA, and this tends to have been the main model that we in New Zealand have been exposed to. It was interesting, therefore, to observe the variety of coordination efforts taking place in other parts of the world. A number of speakers talked, for instance, about the role of the health system in coordinated responses to family violence, something the Hamilton pilot did not test. Training for health workers about family violence was identified as a priority by several people and the results of training programmes were presented – some clearly more successful than others. An "incentive" to become responsive has appeared in some parts of the United States where some accreditation bodies are now demanding that hospitals have protocols for identification and referral of domestic violence cases.
A further example, this time located in the criminal justice system, was the linking of protection orders with advocacy for women, such as housing, education, and also with batterers' programmes. In one courtroom, letters are sent to women two weeks before their orders are due to expire asking if they require a further order to be issued.
Where two or more programmes or services operate together in some way, assessing the combined effect becomes even more difficult and no really satisfactory evaluations seem to have been carried out so far. One of the few truly experimentally designed evaluations which involves virtually random allocation to one of four groups is taking place in New York. This research is testing the effects of men's education programmes, advocacy/ information services for women, and the combined effects of both. It is reasonably small in scale and results are not expected for another year or so.
Mandatory arrest policies. There were several sessions on the effectiveness of criminal justice sanctions in addressing family violence, including topics such as protection orders, police attitudes, the role of judges and mandatory arrest. Mandatory arrest policies have been implemented widely in the United States following an experiment in Minneapolis in 1984 which tested the effectiveness, for deterring family violence, of arresting offenders in domestic disputes. That initial study, designed and implemented by Lawrence Sherman, was followed by a programme of six replications of that experiment in other parts of the country. The Spouse Abuse Replication Program (SARP) found a variety of conflicting results and has generated much debated in the United States about whether, and in what circumstances, mandatory arrest policies are desirable.
In New Zealand, the Police policy in respect of family violence is described as "pro-arrest". This means that where there is evidence an assault has taken place, an arrest will be made. However, our Police stress that an important part of the policy is the referral of victims to agencies which are able to provide support and information. The arrest itself is not regarded as the end of the story from the Police point of view.
One speaker at the conference examined the SARP experiments in some detail. He pointed out what while the results of the experiments have caused debate about mandatory arrest, questions can also be raised about the experiments themselves. One of the points made was that when arguing the merits of mandatory arrest, it is important to be clear about what its objectives are. Sherman has also made the same point: does mandatory arrest aim to prevent reoffending by those people arrested or is it more of a general deterrent to the population as a whole? The conference speaker expanded on this by questioning whether the policy should be addressing total cessation of violence or time-limited cessation, i.e. time to failure should also be built in as an outcome measure. A re-analysis of the data is currently being undertaken.
Collaboration between researchers and advocates. Considering that nearly all of the American researchers present at the conference were based in universities, the opportunity for research findings to be applied in practice was an important issue. Ed Gondolf opened the session by saying that the current emphasis on programme evaluation and applied policy demands collaboration with advocates. There is, however, no clear blueprint of what this entails. The importance of collaboration early on in the research process was stressed, even, where possible, to the point of having advocate groups being involved in setting the research agenda. This will help ensure the relevance of the research being done.
Speakers highlighted some of the issues which arise to make research difficult to undertake in this area. For instance, many voluntary agencies perceive research as taking away funds and resources from them; there is a general suspicion about researchers (especially those who are evaluating programmes, in case the outcome is unfavourable for the group concerned); randomised control groups are the dread of any agency that does not believe potential clients should be deprived of their services; and evaluations are sometimes difficult because protocols are not always followed exactly due to the need to provide services which are tailored for particular clients.
In addition to looking at the linkages between researchers and advocates, we also need to continually look at the linkages between research and policy making. It is important for researchers to be aware of, and plan for, how their research is applied in the policy process. If we do not, we can hardly blame advocates or policy makers for criticising the relevance of our work or, even worse, just ignoring it.
Conclusion. Overall, this was an extremely valuable conference which gave researchers the chance to exchange ideas and examine the work of their colleagues in a demanding and rapidly growing field. A greater emphasis on some of the processes underlying research, such as ethics and politics, would have been beneficial. Feminist research, for instance, was confined to one session. This was an interesting choice, considering the University of New Hampshire is the home of Murray Straus, whose research showing women are as violent as men has provoked considerable controversy in the field, and who has been roundly criticised for his failure to examine the context in which such violence occurs.
There is still a great need for reliable and sound research in this area, especially rigorous, controlled evaluations. Until we are sure of the benefits of particular strategies we need to exercise caution in declaring their success. It is not good enough to place the safety of victims of family violence in the hands of untested and unproven programmes. To do so is irresponsible, dangerous and unethical.
