National Impact Evaluation of Victim Programs Through the S.T.O.P. Violence Against Women Formula Program, United States, 2000-2001

The purpose of this evaluation was to assess whether the STOP (Services/Training/Officers/Prosecution) Violence Against Women Formula Grants Program's financial support for direct victim services offered through private nonprofit victim service agencies helped victims of domestic violence and sexual assault improve their safety and well-being, and work successfully with the legal system and other relevant agencies.
Researchers selected eight states whose state STOP agency had different levels of emphasis on creating collaborative structures in local service networks to help victims. Researchers collected information, as of November 15, 1999, about 201 nonprofit victim service agencies receiving STOP funding to deliver direct services, their services, and their community linkages. A Program Survey, Part
1 (Victim Impact Program Survey -- Fax to Subgrantees Data) and Part 2 (Victim Impact Program Survey -- Telephone Interview with Subgrantees Data) completed in spring 2000 used telephone interviews with the person most knowledgeable about STOP-funded activities to obtain this information. The sample included 201 nonprofit victim service agencies that were nationally representative of all private nonprofit victim service agencies receiving STOP funds for direct services.
Among the purposes of the Program Survey data was selecting the communities in the eight focal states to include in the final stage of the study design -- the Help Seeker and the Community sample (Parts 3 and 4, respectively).
The Help Seeker (Part 3) sample consisted of 958 women recruited from nonprofit victim service and legal system agencies who had contacted those agencies for assistance related to experiences of domestic violence and/or sexual assault.
They were interviewed between June and October 2001.
The Community sample (Part 4) was a random sample of 673 women in their communities who were 18 to 35 years of age. The sample was selected using random digit dialing (RDD), screening for women aged 18 to 35 in the victim service program catchment area from which researchers drew the Help Seeker sample. The women in the Community sample were interviewed between November 2001 and February 2002.
The women's data were then linked to Program Survey data from their own community.  Across the 4 data files there are 2,947 variables.
Part 1 (Victim Impact Program Survey -- Fax to Subgrantees Data) contains information related to the role of the agency which received STOP funding, the characteristics of employees and volunteers of the agency, and the characteristics of victims the agency served. The data also include how many victims of domestic violence the agency assisted with obtaining protective/restraining orders and the number of victims helped through criminal justice advocacy activities.  The agency approximated how many referrals they received from other sources and how many referrals they made to other agencies/organizations. There were also questions related to the STOP grant(s) received by the agencies and the agencies were asked about their data collection and evaluation efforts and in what form this information was maintained.
Part 2 (Victim Impact Program Survey -- Telephone Interview with Subgrantees Data) contains background information regarding the agency and the respondent answering questions on behalf of the agency.  Respondents were also asked whether their agency conducted needs assessments to identify community needs with respect to violence against women, to identify service solutions to meet those needs, and to summarize their STOP project goals and activities.  The data file also includes questions about referrals and how their agency's STOP project related to other activities of the agency.  Additionally, the respondent answered questions related to the coordination and communication between their agency, law enforcement, prosecution, and victim service agencies.  There were also general community questions, and the respondent provided outreach information.  Respondents were also asked a series of questions about their agency's contact with the state STOP administrator.
Part 3 (Study of Women's Services -- Help Seeker Sample Data) and Part 4 (Study of Women's Services -- Community Sample Data) asked women about their demographic background, their intimate relationships, the types of violence they had experienced with intimate partners, and whether or not they had been sexually assaulted and the circumstances around such experiences.  Respondents in these data files were also asked if they were familiar with the victim service agencies in their community.  In addition, the women were asked if they had used any victim service or legal system agencies in the community.  Also included is the extent to which respondents felt the staff of victim service and legal system agencies behaved positively or negatively toward them, how effective they found the help from the legal system to be, how helpful they found the activities provided by victim service agencies to be, and how much control they felt they had over the services provided from victim service and legal system agencies.  The respondents were also asked if they would ever use these agencies again if they needed to, how satisfied they were with the outcome of the legal system case, how satisfied they were with their lives in general, and how much social support they received from people in their lives.  Essentially, the same questions were asked during the Help Seeker and Community Sample interviews, but were asked in a different order.