The author(s) shown below used Federal funds provided by the U.S. 

Department of Justice and prepared the following final report: 

Document Title: Intimate Partner Violence Risk Assessment 

Validation Study, Final Report

Author(s): Janice Roehl, Ph.D.; Chris O’Sullivan, Ph.D.; 

Daniel Webster, ScD; Jacquelyn Campbell, Ph.D. 

Document No.: 209731 

Date Received: May 2005 

Award Number: 2000-WT-VX-0011 

This report has not been published by the U.S. Department of Justice. 

To provide better customer service, NCJRS has made this Federallyfunded grant final report available electronically in addition to

traditional paper copies.

 

Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect 

the official position or policies of the U.S. 

Department of Justice.
Intimate Partner Violence Risk Assessment Validation Study 

NIJ 2000WTVX0011 

Final Report: March 28, 2005 

PROJECT PERSONNEL

Johns Hopkins University 

Jacquelyn C. Campbell, PhD, RN, Principal Investigator 

Daniel Webster, ScD, Co-Investigator 

Patricia Mahoney, MA, Project Director 

Safe Horizon, New York 

Chris O’Sullivan, PhD, Co-Principal Investigator 

Melissa White, MSW, Project Director; Johanne Eliacin, MA, Project Director 

Justice Research Center, California

Janice Roehl, PhD, Co-Principal Investigator 

Kristen Guertin, Project Director 

Kate Semple, Project Director 

OVERVIEW 

The major purpose of this multi-site field test, funded by the National Institute of Justice, was to 

assess the predictive accuracy of several methods of assessing risk of repeat assault or potential 

lethality in domestic violence cases. The methods tested were chosen because they are currently 

being used by agencies and service providers around the country. One of the instruments, the 

Danger Assessment (DA), and the threat assessment method, DV-MOSAIC, include questions or 

domains of inquiry designed to diagnose risk of lethal violence and extreme dangerousness. Two 

of the instruments tested, the Domestic Violence Screening Instrument (DVSI) and Kingston 

Screening Instrument for Domestic Violence (K-SID) were designed to diagnose risk of repeat 

assault at any level. We also tested a number of other questions, drawn from other instruments, 

that research shows may be diagnostic of dangerousness. For those instruments and the 

assessment method that yield an overall rating, we evaluated the correlation of those ratings with 

subsequent re-assault, stalking, serious injury or death. In assessing the predictive accuracy of the 

three instruments and one threat assessment method, we took into account protective actions 

taken, which may mitigate risk. The major goal of the field test was: 

To test the predictive accuracy of two instruments which assess risk of repeat violence (the DVSI 

and K-SID) in intimate relationships, and one instrument (the Danger Assessment) and one Threat 

Assessment Method (DV-MOSAIC) assessing lethal or near lethal risk in violent intimate partner 

relationships. 

We also aimed to determine the strength of prediction of the individual risk factors found in these 

instruments/method, other assessment instruments, and the DV literature, and in a more limited 

fashion, to evaluate the impact of risk assessment on victims’ self-perceived risk and self-protective 

behaviors. In this report, we will report on the results of the major purpose of the study. Additional 

analyses to address the secondary purposes are not complete and will be disseminated in future 

manuscripts. 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 1

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
A. BACKGROUND AND SIGNIFICANCE 

PURPOSE AND OBJECTIVES 

Women in the United States are murdered by an intimate partner (married and non-married) or 

former partner more often than by an acquaintance or stranger. In fact, at least 30% of American 

women who are killed are murdered by an intimate partner or ex-partner according to the 

Supplemental Homicide Records (SHR; NJC, 2000). When hand counts correct for the 

misclassifications in the SHR (Langford, 1992), the percentage increases to 40 – 50% (Campbell et 

al., 2003a; 2003b). In cases of intimate partner homicide, the victim or perpetrator or both have 

usually had contact with criminal justice, victim assistance, and/or health agencies (Sharps et al., 

2001). The agencies will hold a fatality review and ask themselves, “Could we have known? 

What were the signs?” The public and press will ask, “Why wasn’t more done to protect her?” In 

hindsight, there usually was a sign. Often, there was a failure to read that sign or to act on it. 

Sometimes it is difficult to convince the victim that the risk was serious enough to warrant drastic 

and penalizing alterations to her lifestyle to stay alive. 

Galina Komar, who had been assaulted and was being stalked by her ex-boyfriend, told a judge 

that he would kill her. The judge released him from jail on time served because there were no new 

charges. When her former partner tracked Ms. Komar down at her job at a car sales lot and shot 

her and himself, the judge said the case was indistinguishable from the hundreds of other 

misdemeanor assault cases he presided over that did not end in murder. Yet research shows that 

victims can be more accurate than others in identifying the risk of severe and potentially lethal 

violence (Goodman, Dutton et al., 2000; Gondolf & Heckert, 2002; Weisz, Tolman & Saunders,

2000). Ms. Komar was participating in a project of the DA’s office that provided high- risk victims 

with cell phones connected to the police, but she had not brought the phone to work that day. In 

any case, it is unlikely that the police could have responded quickly enough to prevent the murdersuicide that occurred within minutes of the confrontation. 

In another case, a man who was participating in a batterer program was despondent over the 

prospect of spending Christmas alone, separated from his wife and children by court order. The 

other men in the class invited him over and the instructor gave the man his cell phone number. His 

wife had declined the services of a police program that offers counseling and safety planning to 

victims in cases identified as high risk because of repeated 911 calls. Shortly after the holiday, the 

man shot his wife and himself. The batterer program changed its protocol to include depression as 

a danger sign. The victim assistance program wondered what they could have done to encourage 

the victim to avail herself of their services, to take her situation as seriously as they did. 

In yet another fatality review, the police officer who had responded to the most recent call said that, 

although the crime scene looked like all the other domestic violence calls he had handled when 

there was minor violence and no injuries, this time, when he interviewed the victim, the "hair on the 

back of his neck stood up.” He didn’t know why. 

Finally, in another case, a man was evaluated for suicidal intent by a psychiatrist on call from an 

emergency department. Although well trained in traditional suicidality risk, this mental health 

professional failed to assess for and take into account the salience of domestic violence in the 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 2

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
man’s marriage, his wife’s recent separation, as well as his destruction of her property and his 

access to guns. The psychiatrist decided that the man was not immediately suicidal and let him 

go. Within hours of his release, the man killed his wife and then himself. Their eight year old son 

heard the shots and found the bodies. 

Using data from a recently completed study of intimate partner femicide in 11 cities, Sharps, 

Campbell and associates (2001) found that although only 5% had gone to a domestic violence 

shelter, 74% of the 239 murdered women and 88% of victims of attempted femicide had been seen 

in emergency departments for some ailment during the year before the incident. Thirty-two percent 

of the women had sought help at hospital emergency departments, hospital inpatient units or 

ambulatory care settings for injuries specifically resulting from the abuse. Just over half (51%) of 

the perpetrators had been previously arrested by police: 44% were arrested for prior domestic 

abuse incidents, 37% for other violent crimes and 58% for other non-violent crimes. Thus, the 

anecdotes above are not atypical and dramatize the need for law enforcement, the courts, victim 

assistance programs and hospital emergency departments to have valid and systematic means of 

evaluating domestic violence cases and identifying those most likely to escalate to lethality. In 

addition, in spite of the evidence that abused women’s perception of high risk is often accurate, the 

11- city femicide study found that only about half of the women who were victims of actual or 

attempted intimate partner homicide accurately assessed their risk (Campbell et al., 2003b). As in 

other studies of abused women, they underestimated the threat of lethality or diminish the severity 

of the violence being perpetrated against them. This minimization has been interpreted as an 

adaptive coping mechanism that allows victims to continue to invest in the relationship and reduce 

the distressing symptoms of trauma (e.g., Campbell et al., 1998). Weisz also sees it as a survival 

strategy, when leaving is likely to trigger lethal violence (Weisz, Tolman & Saunders, 2000). The 

history of the development of the coordinated community response to domestic violence reveals 

other reasons for validating formal instruments for evaluating risk. 

Project Need

Over the past two decades, there has been a dramatic transformation in the response to intimate 

partner violence across all sectors of society, including the criminal justice system, social services, 

health care and public opinion. Enhancement of the response in the criminal justice system 

includes a change in law enforcement officers’ treatment of domestic violence calls, such policies 

as mandatory arrest and prosecution, training for law enforcement and judges on the dynamics of 

domestic violence, increased penalties, and special domestic violence courts. In social services, 

the last twenty years have seen the creation of hotlines and emergency shelters for battered 

women and their children across the nation, creation of advocacy programs in family and criminal 

courts, and counseling programs in virtually every community. In a more recent development, child 

welfare programs are beginning to take domestic violence into account and to offer services to 

battered mothers as an integral component of child safety. In health care settings, emergency 

departments and prenatal settings increasingly screen for domestic violence and many hospitals 

have advocacy and counseling programs for victims of domestic violence. Public awareness of 

domestic violence as a crime, not a private family matter, has also altered the landscape and 

increased the demand for services (Kline, Campbell, Soler & Ghez, 1997). 

The increased use of criminal justice remedies for intimate partner violence has necessitated a sort 

of triage in case processing by law enforcement, prosecutors and the courts. The demand for 

emergency shelter exceeds supply (Crowell & Burgess, 1996), and the number of cases entering 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 3

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
the courts prohibits incarceration of every individual convicted of a misdemeanor for assaulting or 

harassing an intimate partner. Determining the seriousness of a particular case and risk of 

escalation is necessary not only for the obvious reason of allocating resources. It is also important 

to tailor the response to the level of dangerousness, to make the response appropriate, in order to 

avoid violating the civil rights of offenders and to avoid unnecessarily disrupting the lives of victims 

and their children. An overzealous response can discourage victims from accessing services and 

using the criminal justice system. At the same time, it may be necessary in some cases for service 

providers and law enforcement to try to convince victims that they are in a high-risk situation when 

they believe the abuser will not hurt them again. Convincing a victim that it is necessary to leave 

her home and friends and take her children out of school to enter an emergency shelter or relocate 

requires her belief that she has no alternative, that staying home is really not safe. Convincing a 

woman to cooperate in having her partner tried on a felony charge and possibly incarcerated, 

depriving the children of a father, the family of a source of financial support, and treating the person 

she is emotionally attached to as a criminal may require persuasive evidence. Several experts in 

this field have maintained that the process of risk assessment can help victims come to a more 

realistic appraisal of the danger in their situation (Humphreys & Campbell, 2004; Campbell, 1995; 

de Becker, 2000). 

In part, the attempt to predict which batterers are most dangerous and which victims are most at 

risk stems from the apparent predictability of this crime. It is typically a repetitive crime, with the 

same perpetrator and victim. Furthermore, there is a wide spread belief (not fully supported by 

research) that the violence usually escalates over the course of the relationship. There is evidence 

that the risk of severe violence and murder may increase when the victim attempts to end the 

relationship, and if she separates from the abuser (Daly & Wilson, 1993; Campbell et al., 2003), 

although no comparison has been made with abused women who stay in the relationship. Clearly, 

however, only a small percentage of violent intimate partnerships end in murder. Because, 

however, the perpetrator and victim may already be known to the system, and observations have 

been made of common characteristics of the cases that do end in homicide, it seems incumbent on 

service providers to attempt to identify the high-risk cases and intervene most strenuously in those 

cases. For example, police might opt for arrest, prosecutors might advocate for incarceration over 

alternative sentencing, courts might provide expedited prosecution, and shelters might give priority 

to high-risk cases even though demand exceeds supply, and probation departments might be more 

vigilant and check in more frequently if we could identify the most dangerous offenders. 

Responding to this need, programs and agencies dealing with batterers and victims, such as police 

programs, victim assistance agencies and probation departments, have adopted a number of 

mechanisms to identify high-risk cases. The mechanisms include checklists, clinical interviews or 

practitioners’ intuitions, and formal assessment instruments (Campbell, 1995). There has been a 

great deal of interest among law enforcement in the MOSAIC 20 and its later version DV-MOSAIC, 

a computer-assisted threat assessment method developed by Gavin de Becker & Associates. The 

MOSAIC 20 has been purchased by POST, California’s main police standards and training 

organization, which gives it to all law enforcement officers who attend DV training workshops. (We 

do not know the extent of its usage, however.) MOSAIC 20 has since been succeeded by DVMOSAIC, which is more an investigation guide and training method than a risk assessment 

questionnaire. Probation departments in Colorado use the Domestic Violence Screening 

Instrument (DVSI), and probation departments in Connecticut used the Kingston Screening 

Instrument for Domestic Violence (K-SID; Gelles). 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 4

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Minnesota law requires a pre-sentence domestic violence investigation conducted by the 

appropriate corrections agency before a perpetrator of DV is sentenced by a judge. The report is to 

include: "a recommendation on any limitations on contact with the victim and other measures to 

ensure the victim's safety" (MS 609.2244). Some counties have introduced forms of risk or 

dangerousness assessment to meet this requirement. For example, Hennepin County 

(Minneapolis) uses the DVSI; if an offender scores high on that brief instrument, the investigators 

administer the SARA (Spousal Abuse Risk Assessment). Police departments, shelters, and 

hospital-based domestic violence programs have adopted the Danger Assessment (Campbell, 

1995). The Navy has developed a risk assessment inventory, and the Duluth program has 

developed the PSI to assess system safety as well as individual risk. Most commonly, however, 

practitioners assess risk “clinically,” relying on beliefs or knowledge, experience and intuition, or 

they use an ad hoc scale or in the case of law enforcement, arrest records or repeat calls to the 

same location. Some entire states (such as Colorado) and provinces (such as Ontario) in Canada 

have mandated risk assessment in all domestic violence cases in the criminal justice system. 

None of the instruments in use has been rigorously independently or comparatively validated using 

a prospective design. The lack of such validation has discouraged some agencies from adopting 

an instrument, although they are often under pressure to have some method of identifying the 

cases most likely to escalate to homicide. 

Purpose and Utility to Criminal Justice System

The primary purpose of this research project was to conduct a field test of some of the instruments 

and methods developed specifically to assess risk of repeat intimate partner violence and severe 

or lethal violence in various settings. This prospective study produced quantitative results showing 

the comparative predictive validity of instruments/assessment methods currently in use by law 

enforcement, probation and victim assistance programs. The data also suggest the degree to 

which agencies should (or should not) rely upon such assessments; and their validity for different 

levels of risk and different populations. Overall, the results should help criminal justice agencies 

and their cooperating partners decide whether to use a formal risk assessment instrument or 

method and, if so, which to adopt in different settings and what role formal assessment should 

play. A limitation of the study is that we will not, in a single study, be able to address all the 

important questions regarding the impact of risk assessment in the field. 

Future studies will have to determine the impact of risk assessment (possibly with the most 

predictive instrument or method identified in this experiment) on agencies’ decision making and 

victims’ perceptions and actions, utilizing a control group that does not receive a formal risk 

evaluation and a comparison group that receives a clinical assessment. Also, the feasibility, utility 

and impact of risk assessment need to be investigated in different settings, relying upon different 

information sources. Although this study did recruit participants from many types of settings, the 

primary information source was the victim, and the risk assessments were administered by 

researchers rather than law enforcement personnel or practitioners. Actual field use and 

implementation could present a different picture. 

Report Organization

A one-year planning study (O’Sullivan, Campbell & Roehl, 1998, NIJ Grant 98-WT-VX-0019) was 

carried out to resolve issues of victim safety and such concerns as the duty to warn victims at risk; 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 5

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
methodological issues, such as populations to be tested, the sample size necessary to capture all 

levels of risk that present to different agencies, and the appropriate follow-up interval and 

implementatiion issues, including identifying field sites and reaching agreements with them about 

contacting victims seeking assistance, and negotiating an agreement with Gavin de Becker & 

Associates on the use of DV-MOSAIC. 

The findings and outcomes of the planning study are presented as the relevant parts of the 

methods section rather than a separate section. The introductory section of the report is a 

comprehensive review of the state of the science in assessment of risk of intimate partner homicide 

and re-assault, with focus on the extant reliability and validity data of the risk assessment 

instruments and methods in use, one of the outcomes of the planning study. The literature review 

is broad, covering the general topic of assessing risk, specific risk factors in domestic violence, and 

the state of the science, including development of domestic violence risk instruments and risk 

assessment methods. The next section describes the methodology of the study, including staffing, 

the procedures followed in each of the settings, description of the analysis plan, human subjects 

issues, and limitations and obstacles. The rest of the report presents the study results, and the final 

section discusses the findings, limitations of the study, and recommendations for policy and future 

research. 

B. PREDICTING DANGEROUSNESS IN INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE: 

THE STATE OF THE SCIENCE 

Approaches to Assessing Risk of Violence 

Clinical vs. Actuarial Assessment

Predicting dangerousness or repeat violence in cases of intimate partner violence (IPV) is of 

increasingly intense interest to both the advocacy community and the criminal justice system. In 

the mental health field, there has been a longer history of interest in predicting dangerousness of 

individuals and more methods have been developed and tested, as part of a tradition of diagnosis 

and prognostication through empirically validated testing. Therefore, we turn first to psychiatry for 

models of assessing risk of violence. There has been a long and vigorous debate among mental 

health researchers about whether formal instruments – the “actuarial method” – are more valid 

than clinical judgment (e.g. Quinsey et al., 1998; Litwack & Schlesinger, 1999). An actuarial 

method can be defined an instrument that provides weightings and empirically based scores that 

relate predictor variables selected from measured associations with criterion variables in 

representative samples (Hilton, Harris, Rice, Lang, Cormier & Lines, 2004; Webster, Harris, Ricke, 

Cormier, & Quinsey, 1994). In assessing violence risk, an actuarial instrument is one that has 

been formally and independently tested and shown actually to predict violent outcomes. 

Litwack and Schlesinger (1998) maintain that the current state of the science does not support the 

accuracy of actuarial methods, while Quinsey (Quinsey, Harris, et al., 1998) and others maintain 

that actuarial methods are the only defensible approach. A recent meta-analysis of 95 studies of 

re-offending among sexual offenders (Hanson & Morton-Bourgon, 2004) first of all demonstrated 

how much further along the path to actuarial methods the sexual assault field is than the intimate 

partner violence field, given the sheer number of studies available for analysis. The findings also 

supported the use of actuarial risk assessment instruments over “unguided clinical opinion” with 

“empirically guided professional judgments” intermediate between the two. Thus, a dichotomy is 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 6

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
probably overly simplistic, since the best approach is to gather as much information (clinical and 

actuarial) from as many sources as possible in the time available and under the extant 

circumstances (Litwack, Stuart ,et al., 1993; Litwack & Schlesinger, 1998; Monahan, 1996; Mulvey 

& Lidz, 1995). The ideal would be a well-validated instrument specific to the type of violence being 

assessed in the hands of a clinician who is expert in that type of violence by virtue of training and 

experience. Kropp (2004) suggests the terminology “structured professional judgment” to describe 

this kind of approach. This approach also would include guidelines for how to collect the 

information and communicating the results of any assessment. 

The Hanson and Morton-Bourgon (2004) meta analysis of sexual assault offenders used the d. 

statistic, a standardized mean difference between recidivists and non-recidivists. This test showed 

no significant differences among the six major sexual re-offending measures, although their 

predictive accuracy ranged from d. = .52 -.77. The meta-analysis also showed that general 

criminal recidivism actuarial measures did as well as the sexual assault specific instruments in 

predicting sexual reassault and were better at predicting general (any) criminal recidivism, the 

more common reoffense of this type of perpetrator. Little of this kind of work has been done in the 

domestic violence field, nor are there a sufficient number of data sets upon which to conduct a 

meta-analysis.

Comparison between Assessing Risk of Community Violence Among Mentally Ill and Assessing 

Risk of Intimate Partner Violence

Even accepting Quinsey’s argument that the actuarial approach is preferable, the adequacy of 

actuarial assessment depends on the development of the science in the specific area of violence 

under consideration and type of perpetrator involved. In Quinsey’s major area of assessment, 

sexual assault perpetrators, there is time to conduct assessment of the perpetrator, instrumentation 

(phallometric assessment) and actuarial science development, permitting the kind of composite 

evaluation that best predicts re-offending (Quinsey et al., 1998). The most research on assessing 

the risk of future violence has been conducted in the areas of sexual assault, general violent 

behavior, and community violence by the diagnosed mentally ill. The applicability of these 

developments to intimate partner violence is not clear, nor is it clear how much of a risk 

psychopathology in general and psychopathy specifically is for perpetration of either domestic 

violence or intimate partner homicide.. Sexual assault perpetrators and batterers have not been 

compared (with the exception of O’Sullivan’s [1998] article on gang rapists and batterers, which 

found important differences between the two groups).1 

Most studies have not found consistent patterns of psychopathology among batterers, leading 

several researchers to propose typologies of batterers with differential patterns of mental illness

(e.g. Holtzworth-Munroe & Stuart, 1994). Others propose that domestic violence has been a 

socially acceptable expression of male dominance, and therefore, while a small percentage may be 

mentally ill, the majority of batterers are merely suffering from socialization to masculinity and 

 1

 We recognize that batterers frequently abuse their partners sexually, but we are drawing a 

distinction here between men whose primary crime is sexual assault of strangers, acquaintances 

and perhaps intimate partners, and men whose primary crime is abuse of an intimate partner,

including sexual abuse. 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 7

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
patriarchal enculturation. In sum, borrowing instruments from mental health assessments of risk of 

violence may therefore be inappropriate. 

State of the Science of Assessment of Risk of Intimate Partner Violence

In the intimate partner violence field, checklists developed to aid practitioners’ expert judgment 

(e.g. Hart, 1988) are widely used. More recently, several instruments have been developed to 

assist domestic violence service providers, law enforcement and the courts in determining the 

cases most likely to escalate to severe or lethal violence, and a number of these instruments and 

ad hoc scales are in use. Several of the instruments have recently published predictive validity

support but none have been widely validated in independent studies conducted by other 

researchers than the instrument developers. Therefore, none can be defined as an independently 

validated actuarial method, the kind of instrument sought by the field. Furthermore, in contrast with 

mental health practitioners conducting clinical assessment, police and probation officers, victim

advocates and health care providers who come into contact with batterers and victims of intimate 

partner violence are not primarily and specifically trained in clinical assessment. Their expertise

and judgments may be equally valid, but come from experience and may vary widely according to 

the individual’s interest in and understanding of domestic violence.

Even to the extent that there has been testing to validate individual instruments, there have been 

methodological problems because of the low base rate of the offense in question, especially if the 

criterion is re-arrest, or, even more so, homicide. The low rate of intimate partner homicide makes 

it especially statistically problematic to predict (Monahan, 1984). 

The lack of validated instruments and the question of clinical vs. actuarial method are but two of 

the issues that are problematic in the current state of the science regarding risk assessment in 

intimate partner violence cases. A third is the frequent lack of clarity regarding the type of 

prediction required for the situation. Some of the instruments/threat assessment methods were 

created expressly to predict lethality or near lethality in domestic violence situations, most notably 

the MOSAIC-20 (Gavin de Becker & Associates) and the Danger Assessment (DA; Campbell, 

1986; 1995; 2003). Others were designed to predict reassault, for instance the SARA (Spousal 

Abuse Risk Assessment; Kropp et al., 1995; Kropp & Hart, 2000), the DVI and the K-SID 

(Kingston-Screening Inventory for Domestic Violence; Gelles, 1995). Others attempt to predict 

both re-assault and lethality (Navy Risk Assessment and PSI). 

The instruments and methods also vary in regard to the primary source of information (perpetrator, 

victim and/or other sources, such as criminal records), and which system the information is 

primarily intended to benefit, such as victim assistance programs, probation, etc. (Roehl & Guertin, 

2000). Roehl and Guertin (1998, 2000) provided a comprehensive overview of these issues in 

relationship to the major instruments and methods that are currently in use. 

Finally, there are unique ethical and empirical issues in assessing risk of intimate partner violence. 

A unique aspect of prediction in IPV is that a particular individual victim is the object of concern, 

rather than the population at large addressed in prediction of sexual assault and mental patient 

violence. Knowing the identity of the potential victim makes it possible, and therefore incumbent on 

service providers, to consider her (or his) safety as paramount. Furthermore, the known potential 

target will have her (or his) own perception of the dangerousness of the perpetrator, a prediction

that may be more accurate than any instrument or clinician. The intended victim may have input 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 8

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
into the process of risk assessment, and may need to know the results of and system response to 

any formal risk assessment. 

This unique situation creates the need for research on domestic violence risk assessment to take 

into account the victim’s actions as a result of risk assessment and any proactive/preventive 

response on the part of the victim or criminal justice system. These actions will compromise the 

ability of the research to detect the accuracy in predicting recurrence of violence, especially lethal 

or severe reassault. (This issue is addressed in the proposed methodology.) 

Risk Factors from Research

 Intimate Partner Homicide - Homicide/femicide Rates

American women are most often killed by a husband or lover, or ex-husband or ex-lover (Mercy et 

al., 1989; Bailey et al., 1997; Bachman et al., 1995). Thus, intimate partner homicide is the largest 

category of murders of women, or femicide, accounting for approximately 30-40% of murders of 

women according to the official counts based on the Supplemental Homicide Reports (SHR; 

National Institute of Justice, 2000). Since the SHR misclassifies as many as 13% of intimate 

partner homicides of women as non-intimate partner, this percentage is undoubtedly an 

underestimate (Langford, Isaac & Kabat, 1998). The recent 11- city intimate partner femicide study 

(Campbell et al., 2003) found 19.3% of those intimate partner homicides of women to be 

perpetrated by an ex-boyfriend, a category of perpetrator not specifically accounted for by the 

SHR. A recent analysis of the data on homicides of women in 2001 found that husbands and 

intimates perpetrated in 51% of cases (Brock, 2003). In contrast to homicides of women, 

homicides by intimate partners account for a relatively small proportion of murders of men in the 

US, approximately 5-8% in 2000 (Lattimore et al., 1997; National Institute of Justice, 2000). 

In recent decades in the US, intimate partner homicide rates overall have declined (Dugan, Nagin 

& Rosenfeld, 2003; Rosenfeld, 1997). One possible explanation for this trend is that the 

concurrent lower marriage rates in recent decades have decreased women’s exposure to legally 

sanctioned spouses. However, while there has been a decrease in murders of married women by 

their husbands, there has been an increase in murders of non-married women by their boyfriends 

(Rosenfeld, 1997). Another reason for the decline appears to be lowered handgun availability, at 

least in some cities (National Institute of Justice, 1997; Wilt, Illman, & Brodyfield, 1995). 

The largest decreases in intimate partner homicide have been for male victims. Consequently, the 

proportion of male homicides by female intimate partners has decreased and the proportion of 

femicides by male intimate partners has increased. From 1976 to 1996, the percentage of intimate 

partner homicides with female victims increased from 54% to 70% (National Institute of Justice, 

1997; Zawitz, 1994). The decrease in the number of men killed by female partners coincided with 

the development of services for battered women and the enhancement of the criminal justice 

response. A connection has been made between the increased alternatives and protections 

available to battered women, such as the reduction of barriers to leaving violent relationships, legal 

sanctions and shelter resources and the decline in the male intimate partner homicide rate: women 

are able to secure safety from violence rather than kill an abusive partner (Browne et al., 1998; 

Dugan, Nagin & Rosenfeld, 2003; Rosenfeld, 1997). 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 9

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Factors Associated with Intimate Partner Homicide and Femicide 

 Battering

Abuse is most often a precursor of intimate partner homicides, whether the victim is the male or 

female partner. The majority (67-75%) of intimate partner homicides involve battering of the 

female by the male intimate, no matter which partner is killed (Bailey et al., 1997; Campbell, 1992; 

Campbell et al., 2003; McFarlane et al., 1999; Mercy et al., 1989; Moracco et al., 1998; Pataki, 

1998; Websdale, 1999). Two earlier American studies in different jurisdictions documented that 

two-thirds of the intimate partner femicide cases had a documented history of battering of the 

female partner (Moracco et al., 1998; Campbell, 1992). The recent 11-city study found that 72% of 

the intimate partner femicides were preceded by physical violence by the male partner before he 

killed the woman (Campbell et al., 2003). Intimate partner homicides of men by women are also 

characterized by a history of battering of the female homicide perpetrator by the male partner in as 

many as 75% of the cases (Hall-Smith et al., 1998; Campbell, 1992). It has long been noted that 

female-perpetrated intimate partner homicides are often characterized by self defense, when the 

male partner is the first to show a weapon or strike a blow and is subsequently killed by his victim 

(Block ’93; Browne, Williams & Dutton, 1999; Campbell, 1992; Crawford & Gartner ‘92; Jurik & 

Winn ’90; Smith et al., 1998; Websdale, 1999; Wolfgang, 1958). 

Stalking

Stalking may be an even more common precursor of intimate partner homicide than abuse. 

McFarlane, Campbell and associates (1999) reported that stalking and harassment occurred in 70-

90% of 200 actual and attempted femicides in 11 US cities. The strongest association was the 

combination of estrangement and prior abuse. Yet stalking also occurred in the majority of 

femicides in intact marriages and relationships where there was no history of violence. 

 Estrangement

An association has also been found between intimate partner homicide involving husbands and 

wives and a history of estrangement (Wilson et al., 1993, 1995; Dawson et al., 1998; Websdale, 

1999). The estrangement may take the form of physical leaving or starting legal separation 

procedures. In an analysis of spousal homicide data from Canada, Chicago and the UK, Wilson 

and Daly (1995) found that the combination of physical and legal separation posed the most risk. 

From these studies and clinical experience with battered women, it has been theorized that male 

partners are threatened by loss of control over the relationship when women announce their 

decision to separate, and some men will stop at nothing to regain control, including femicide. 

Although it is clear that the period after separation is a time of increased risk, this danger has not 

been compared with the risk of staying in an abusive relationship. It has also been difficult to 

calculate whether or not separation increases risk in unmarried couples, since the proportion of 

separated to intact couples is not known. In studies in North Carolina and Ontario two to three 

times as many couples (married and not) were intact as were estranged when the woman was 

killed (Dawson & Gartner, 1998; Smith et al., 1998). The same proportion (70% intact, 30% 

estranged) was found in a recent preliminary data analysis of 100 femicides from the US 11-city 

study. However, in 20% of the “intact” couples, the woman had left and returned at least once in 

the prior year (McFarlane et al., 1999). If one considers separation at least once during the prior 

year as a more precise measure of estrangement, then 55% of the intimate partner femicide 

victims in the final study were estranged from their partners when killed (Campbell et al., 2003). In 

the final model, estrangement increased the risk of femicide (in comparison to abused women) by 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 10

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
an odds ration of 3.64. When the perpetrator was highly controlling and there was separation, the 

OR increased to 5.52. 

Demographic Characteristics Associated with Intimate Partner Homicides 

Like perpetrators of other homicides, male perpetrators of intimate partner homicides in the United 

States are mostly poor, young, a member of an ethnic minority group, have a history of other 

violence, and have a history of substance abuse (Weiner, Zahn, & Sagi, 1990). Resource theory of 

domestic abuse from sociology may offer a partial explanation. This theory suggests that when a 

man’s personal resources, such as education, income, job prestige and community standing, are 

lower than his spouse’s, he may use violence to decrease the perceived status difference (Walker, 

1984; Howard, 1986). Often young ethnic minority males are poorly educated, unemployed, or 

underemployed in comparison with their female partners (National Institute of Justice, 1997; 

Jaynes et al., 1989; Bowman, 1993; Smith & Brewer, 1990). As a result, a small percentage may 

resort to violence and eventually murder as a means of exerting power and control to elevate or 

equalize their status in their intimate relationships. In the 11-city intimate partner femicide study, 

unemployment was the only demographic characteristic that was significant in the final model, 

increasing the risk of intimate partner femicide by OR = 4.42. 

Guns

Retrospective and case control studies have associated the use of guns and substance abuse 

(both drugs and alcohol) with intimate partner homicide (Browne, Williams & Dutton, 1998; 

Campbell, 1995). Access to and availability of firearms in the US greatly increases the risk of 

homicide in general, as well as the risk of intimate partner homicide (Kellerman et al., 1993). 

Bailey and associates (1997) reanalyzed the results of two population-based case-control studies 

and found that prior intimate partner violence and gun ownership were strongly associated with

femicide in the home. In a study of 134 homicides of American Indian, Hispanic, and Non-Hispanic 

white women in New Mexico, researchers also found that firearms were nearly two times more 

likely to be used in “domestic” (intimate partner) femicides than other femicides (Arbuckle et al., 

1996). In most cities, handguns are the weapon of choice for intimate partner homicides (Wilt, 

Illman & Field, 1995), although in Chicago (Block et al., 1995), knives (37%) were the most 

commonly used weapon from 1993-96, with firearms a close second (37%). Male perpetrators 

were more likely than female perpetrators to beat an intimate partner to death and slightly more 

likely to use a handgun. In the 11-city femicide study, perpetrator access to a gun increased the 

risk of femicide by OR = 5.38 and then use of a gun drastically increased the risk of the worst 

incident of abuse being fatal (incident level risk factor) by OR = 41.38. 

Alcohol and Drug Use

It is generally difficult to identify substance abuse in homicide perpetrators with certainty unless 

they have committed suicide and blood alcohol levels are thus available. There may also be 

differential risk depending on the substance used (drugs versus alcohol), general substance abuse 

versus intoxication at the time of the homicide, whether the victim or perpetrator or both were 

substance abusers, and sex of the victim and perpetrator. Males are more likely to be alcohol 

abusers as victims than as perpetrators, but male victims and perpetrators are more likely to abuse 

alcohol than are females in either category (Block, 1998; Campbell, 1992; Smith et al., 1998). 

Furthermore, alcohol use is not uniquely associated with intimate partner homicide for women. 

Both Wilt (1994) and Moracco (1998) found alcohol use in as many women killed by intimate 

partners as killed by others. Persuasive evidence about drug abuse was found in two large data 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 11

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
sets (Chicago and North Carolina) where significantly less drug abuse was found in cases of 

intimate partner homicide than other homicides (Moracco et al., 1998; Block & Christakos, 1995). 

Although both were significant at the bivariate level, neither perpetrator problem drinking nor 

perpetrator illicit drug use were significant predictors of femicide in the final models of the 11-city 

femicide study (Campbell et al., 2003). Illicit drug use was a stronger predictor than problem 

drinking and remained a significant predictor until perpetrator aggressive behavior toward the 

partner was added into the model. Although subsumed by more powerful predictors, a remarkable 

70% of the male perpetrators were using drugs or alcohol at the time of the homicidal incident 

(Sharps et al., 2003). Neither victim drug nor alcohol use before or during the femicide were 

significant predictors after controlling for demographics (Sharps et al., 2001). 

Mental illness

Zawitz (1994) reported that 13% of perpetrators (11% of males, 15% of females) in 540 intimate 

partner homicides in the US had a history of mental illness, compared to 3% (not reported by 

gender) of non-family murderers. In other data, approximately one-third of the 200 perpetrators in 

the 11-city study of attempted and actual femicides were described as being in poor (versus fair, 

good or excellent) mental health (Sharps et al., 2001b). Forty-six percent of the male perpetrators 

had had at least one contact with a mental health professional, as compared to 29% of the victims; 

33% had had some contact with an alcohol or drug treatment program, as compared to 25% of 

victims. In the comparative analysis, perpetrator mental health was a significant predictor on the 

bivariate level but not in multivariate analysis. Few other studies have found mental illness to be a 

significant risk factor for intimate partner homicides, but few have been able to use adequate 

operationalization. There is more convergence of evidence of a history of mental illness of 

perpetrators in the studies of homicide-suicide. 

Differential Risk by Gender: Homicide-Suicide, Overkill, Forced Sex & Abuse during Pregnancy

Homicide-suicides represent a significant proportion, 27-32%, of intimate partner femicides. This 

pattern is almost never seen when women kill a male intimate, only for only .1% of such cases in 

North Carolina (Block & Christakos, 1995; Moracco et al., 1998). Intimate-partner homicidesuicides follow different patterns than other intimate partner femicides. In this type of femicide, 

whites are disproportionately represented (Stack, 1997; Buteau et al., 1993; Websdale, 1999). 

Buteau and associates (1993) in Canada as well as US researchers (e.g. Morton et al., 1998; 

Stack, 1997) have divided homicide-suicides into “mercy killings” or “suicide pacts” that involve 

older couples afflicted by physical illness or other serious problems, on the one hand, and the more 

common case of intimate partner involuntary homicide followed by suicide of the perpetrator, on 

the other. In the much larger category of involuntary homicides involving younger perpetrators and 

victims (accounting for 90% of such cases in North Carolina), risk factors for perpetrators included 

being male, jealousy, current or past depression, a long standing relationship with the victim, a 

history of physical abuse or separation/reunion episodes, personality disorder, and alcohol abuse 

(Buteau et al., 1993; Morton et al., 1998). Separation was a factor in 45% of the North Carolina 

homicide-suicides (Morton et al., 1998). A significant proportion of the male perpetrators (15% in 

NC; 21% in Quebec) in the two major studies of the phenomenon had consulted mental health 

services in the year prior to the event (Buteau et al., 1993; Morton et al., 1998). Depression was 

reported in 46% and substance abuse in 23% of perpetrators in Quebec. In North Carolina, 38% of 

the homicide-suicide perpetrators had ingested alcohol before death, but this was a slightly lower 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 12

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
percentage than for partner femicides without suicide (Moracco et al., 1998; Morton et al., 1998). 

In the analysis of the 32% of femicides that were homicide-suicides in the 11-city femicide study, 

perpetrator threats of suicide and perpetrator history of poor mental health were unique predictors 

of this form of femicide (Koziol-McLain et al., under review). 

Overkill is another characteristic of intimate partner femicide that is not usually present when a 

female kills a male partner (Campbell, 1992; Browne et al., 1998). Overkill was first described by 

Wolfgang in 1958 as two or more acts of shooting or stabbing or beating the victim to death. 

Several North American studies have found that the majority (46-90%) of women in intimate 

partner homicides are the victims of overkill, compared to 12% or less of males (Browne et al., 

1998). 

Descriptive evidence and preliminary case control analysis from the 11-city study suggests 

associations of forced sex and abuse during pregnancy with intimate partner femicide (Campbell, 

1986; Campbell, Soeken, McFarlane & Parker, 1998; Campbell & Soeken, 1999; McFarlane, 

Soeken, Campbell, Parker, Reel, & Silva, 2002). Forced sex was a significant risk factor in the 

final model of the 11-city femicide study (OR = 1.8), but abuse during pregnancy was significant on 

a bivariate level only. Particularly violent and dangerous men may be those who also force their 

partners into sex and beat them during pregnancy. In addition, jealous and controlling men may 

suspect or have evidence that the unborn child is not their biological progeny and therefore may kill 

their partners out of male sexual competitiveness (Daly, Wiseman, & Wilson, 1997). This 

theoretical approach was supported by evidence linking heightened risk of intimate partner 

femicide (uxoricide) and the presence of stepchildren (Daly, Wiseman & Wilson, 1997). The 

importance of this risk factor was also found in the 11-city intimate partner femicide study with an 

increased risk of OR=2.4 (Campbell et al., 2003). However, the evidence can also be explained 

through a power and control framework. 

Risk factors for Intimate Partner Violence and for IPRe-assault 

Risk of Intimate Partner Violence 

Early research on domestic violence focused on the risk factors for an individual to become an 

abuser, and there are several reviews of this body of knowledge. In this body of research, 

characteristics consistently found to be associated with violence toward an intimate partner include 

experiencing violence in the family of origin (either as a child victim of abuse or as witness to abuse 

of the mother by a partner), substance abuse, and unemployment (Gondolf, 1997; Gelles & Straus, 

1990; Hotaling & Sugarman, 1990; Saunders, 1995; Tolman & Bennett, 1990). A number of other 

contributing factors have been posited but support has been inconsistent across studies. Although 

some studies find a strong relationship between these factors and battering, in other studies they 

do not reach significance or were not measured. These factors are stress, depression, low selfesteem, traditional sex role attitudes, personality disorders, and status inconsistency (the male 

partner having a lower status in regard to education, income, and occupation than the female 

partner). 

Risk of Re-Offending 

More recently, a separate area of inquiry into the risk of re-assault has begun to develop. 

Generally, it is only a minority of batterers who re-abuse physically during follow-up (Maxwell, 

Garner, & Fagan, 2001). Maxwell and colleagues (as well as Gondolf, 2000) conclude that there is 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 13

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
a small number of batterers that chronically revictimize their partners and that there is a need for 

research “to accurately predict high-rate repeat offenders and to find methods of helping their 

victims” (Maxwell, Garner, & Fagan, 2001, p. 36). Age is strongly associated with re-offending 

rates: that is, it appears that many batterers “age out” of battering their partners (Edleson, 1996; 

Maxwell, Garner & Fagan, 2001). 

Most of the research that provides information about factors associated with repeat domestic 

violence have been studies of the impact of batterer programs on re-offending. The strongest of 

these studies have compared offenders mandated to a batterer program to offenders not so 

mandated, in an experimental design. Generally, these studies have found re-offending rates of 

physical abuse based on victim reports in the range of 30% to 50% and from 10% to 40% based on 

criminal justice data Percentages vary depending on the length of the follow-up period and 

measures used. A recent experimental study in Broward County, Florida, found a high re-arrest 

rate of 24%. The strongest predictor of re-arrest was a lack of “stake in conformity”: that is, 

whether the perpetrator was consistently employed, was married and had a stable residence 

(Jackson, Feder, Forde, Davis et al., 2003). Fourteen percent of the victims reported severe 

battery during the one year follow-up. Again, a lack of stake in conformity best predicted severe 

physical abuse by victim report: “women involved with, but not married to, younger jobless men 

were more likely to report incidents of severe physical violence.” Previous arrest and incarceration 

were another of the key indicators of reassault (Jackson, et al., 2003). Gondolf’s (1997) multi-site 

study of men in batterer programs implicated alcohol, “voluntary” (as opposed to court-mandated) 

program participation, previous arrests, and severe psychological problems as risk factors for 

reassault. Saunders (1995) identified violence outside of the home and lack of remorse as 

indicators of risk of severe abuse. Dutton (1997) found that men who completed a batterer program 

were more likely to re-assault their partners if they had antisocial, borderline and avoidant 

personalities than if they did not score high on these traits. 

Attempts have been made to create typologies of abusers, with different types posing different 

levels of risk. Holtzworth-Munroe and Stuart (1994) have synthesized this body of research and 

proposed and then tested (Holtzworth-Munroe et al, 2000) a typology with 3 categories of abusers: 

the antisocial, the “ordinary” batterer, and the dysphoric-borderline type. According to this 

typology, the antisocial batterer (somewhat analogous to Jacobson’s [1996] Type I or “cobra” type) 

would be at high risk for committing repeated assaults and perhaps homicide; the dysphoricborderline batterer would be at risk to commit homicide and perhaps homicide-suicide if the partner 

left but is otherwise less assaultive and less recognizable as dangerous; and the “ordinary” batterer 

would be at lower risk for re-assault or homicide. 

Victims’ Predictions

Recent studies have found that women’s perception of risk is important in determining risk of reassault by an intimate partner. Weisz, Tolman, and Saunders (2000) found that women’s 

perception of danger was the single best predictor of re-assault, a stronger predictor than any of 

the 10 items from the Danger Assessment available in criminal justice records. Similarly, 

Goodman, Dutton and Bennett (2001) in a sample of 92 women found that women’s prediction of 

re-assault was the strongest single predictor of re-assault. In an analysis of their data on 499 men 

in batterer intervention programs and their partners, Heckert and Gondolf (2004) found women’s 

perception of risk to be a significant predictor of revictimization by an intimate partner, stronger 

than the SARA (Spousal Assault Risk Assessment) and K-SID (Kingston Screening Inventory for 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 14

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Domestic Violence) but not as strong as a simulated version of the Danger Assessment. The best 

model of prediction was the DA along with women’s perception of risk. However, in the 11-city 

femicide study, only 47% of the actual femicide victims and 54% of the victims of attempted 

femicide accurately assessed that their perpetrator was capable of killing them. 

Summary of Risk Factors and Implications for Risk Assessment 

Risk for Intimate Partner Homicide vs. Re-Assault

Clearly, the patterns of intimate partner homicide vary systematically according to the sex of the 

perpetrator. Also clear is that the current body of research supports some risk factors, although 

specific individual and household risk factors are as yet not fully determined – even in North 

America where the majority of research has been conducted (Kellerman et al., 1993; Campbell,

1995; Browne et al., 1998; Campbell et al., 2003). That is, some factors seem to be generally 

present among men who batter, and there seem to be differentiating characteristics among those 

whose assaults escalate, and those who commit homicide. At the same time, other factors are not 

consistently supported by the research, and some of the key factors are present in the background 

of men who do not batter. 

Prior domestic violence and handguns are the most consistent and strongest risk factors for 

homicide, with estrangement, a stepchild in the home and unemployment also strongly implicated. 

Although violence outside of the home, alcohol abuse, and minority ethnicity are also implicated in 

male perpetrated intimate partner homicide, they seem to be less strong risk factors than for other 

types of homicide. Female perpetrators are far less likely to have had a history of perpetrating any 

kind of violence. Homicide-suicide with a male perpetrator is a form of homicide especially 

associated with intimate partnership. Guns, estrangement, and prior mental health problems in the 

form of depression or suicidality are particular risk factors for this form of intimate partner homicide. 

Other aspects of the intimate partner relationship, such as abuse during pregnancy and stalking, 

have also been implicated as risk factors, but the only national comparison study to date (Campbell 

et al., 2003) did not find them to be among the factors in the final models. 

Although there is overlap between the risk factors for re-assault by an intimate partner and the risk 

factors for intimate partner homicide, there seems to be a difference of degree and some 

differential patterns. For instance, substance abuse is more of a risk factor in domestic assault and 

re-assault than in domestic homicide, while perpetrator suicidality is more of a risk factor in murder 

of intimate partners by men (because of the large proportion of homicide-suicides) than in murder 

of intimate partners by women or in domestic violence re-offending. Child abuse victimization and 

witnessing domestic violence in childhood are well documented as risk factors for intimate partner 

abuse perpetration and therefore are presumed to be risk factors for re-assault (Straus & Gelles,

1990; Hilton, Harris, Rice, Lang et. al., 2004). However, neither has been implicated in intimate 

partner lethality, perhaps because this history generally is not part of homicide records. Gun 

ownership, clearly implicated in domestic homicide, does not seem to be a risk factor for either 

minor or severe wife assault (Hanson et al., 1997). 

Clinical vs. Actuarial Assessment of Intimate Partner Violence

Since a history of domestic violence against the female partner is the most consistent and 

strongest risk factors for intimate partner homicide, one of the major approaches to decreasing this 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 15

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
form of mortality is to assess risk with battered women and male perpetrators of domestic violence. 

Clinical assessment of risk has been recommended and used by domestic violence victim 

advocates for more than a decade (e.g., Hart, 1988). Many professionals, including those in law 

enforcement, victim services and health care are now looking for actuarial methods for risk 

assessment; that is, instrumentation based on empirical item selection and with fixed, explicit and 

validated formulas for assignment of risk categories and decision making (Grove & Meehl, 1996; 

Hilton, Harris, Rice, Lang et al., 2004). As described by Hilton and colleagues (Hilton et al., 2004) 

these formal risk assessment methods are different from the usual psychological tests in that the 

usual methods of instrument item selection and psychometric evaluation (factor analysis, item 

analysis, internal consistency, test-retest reliability, construct validity) are less relevant. Instead, 

empirical item selection (using multivariate analysis from an existing data base), assessing 

interrater reliability, cross-validation or discriminant group validity and most importantly predictive 

validity are the most salient evaluation techniques. 

Because of the low base rate of intimate partner homicide and the ethical necessity to intervene in 

obviously dangerous cases, we will never be able to predict intimate partner homicide or determine 

predictive validity of any instrument purporting to assess lethal risk with total certainty (Campbell, 

1995; Litwack & Schlesinger, 1998; Mulvey & Lidz, 1995). In the general field of violence, there is 

recognition that risk assessment is the appropriate terminology for the enterprise, rather than 

prediction of violence or prediction of homicide (Monahan, 1999; Hare, 1999). There is also 

recognition of the importance of improving our ability to determine risk, however difficult and 

uncertain, because of the seriousness of the potential outcomes -- loss of human life or loss of 

liberty -- (Mulvey & Lidz, 1995). 

The first instruments specifically assessing risk in the domestic violence field were developed to 

assist battered women and advocates with safety planning, and therefore were not intended to 

predict risk accurately but more to create awareness in the victim and elicit information for the 

advocate. Subsequently, a number of instruments were developed for use in the criminal justice 

system to evaluate the risk of recidivism, modeled on other instruments for other categories of 

criminals. Most recently, more in line with the instruments designed to assess risk of sexual 

assault recidivism and community violence by the mentally ill, some instruments have been 

designed to assess risk of intimate homicide specifically. The latter are usually designed as 

actuarial methods but do not yet have sufficient psychometric data support to be used as the sole 

determinant of decision making. 

Review of Intimate Partner Violence Risk Assessment Instruments and Assessment Methods

Roehl and Guertin (2000) compiled an overview of instruments designed to assess dangerousness 

in domestic violence situations and their use in sentencing. Ten instruments and one threat 

assessment method were identified and reviewed: the Danger Assessment (Campbell, 1992; 

1995); Domestic Violence Inventory; Domestic Violence Risk Assessment Form; Domestic 

Violence Screening Instrument (Williams, 1999); Kingston Screening Instrument for Domestic 

Violence (Gelles, 1998); MOSAIC-20 (De Becker, 1997); Lethality Checklist and Physical Abuse 

Scale; Pre-Sentence Investigation (Pence, 1999) Domestic Violence Supplement; Risk 

Assessment and Lethality Assessment; and the Spousal Assault Risk Assessment (Kropp et al., 

1995; Kropp & Hart, 2000). In addition to those reviewed by Roehl, the Navy Risk and Safety 

Assessment was also designed to be an actuarial instrument but has not yet been evaluated. 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 16

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Subsequently, the O.D.A.R.A. (Hilton et al., 2004) was developed with claims to be the only true 

actuarial DV risk assessment instrument since it was developed based on criminal justice records 

(in Ontario). It was validated prospectively with an ROC curve assessment of .77. Validity data on 

the PAS (Propensity for Abusiveness Scale) designed as the only risk assessment instrument to 

address potential cases before they occur has also been published since the Roehl and Guertin 

overview (Dutton, Landolt, Starzomski & Bodnarchuk, 2001), and there has been an additional 

review of these instruments (Dutton & Kropp, 2000). 

Two additional “clinical” domestic violence risk factor lists are examples of those widely used in the 

field in various settings that were developed as clinical instruments rather than with psychometric 

evaluation in mind. They have often been adapted in various ways and, as far as is known, are not 

involved in any ongoing studies. Hart’s (1988) domestic homicide risk factor list has been widely

used as the basis for safety planning in shelters and other victim service settings, while Sonkin’s 

(1985) instrument was the first published and developed for use in batterer treatment settings. 

An important distinction can be drawn between assessing risk of re-offending vs. risk of lethal 

violence. This distinction influences which risk factors are identified, intended use of the 

instrument/method, and its validation method. The Danger Assessment (DA) and MOSAIC-20 were 

specifically designed to assess risk of lethal or near lethal violence, while most of the other 

instruments, such as the Kingston Screening Instrument for Domestic Violence (K-SID), Domestic 

Violence Screening Inventory (DVSI), SARA and Presentencing Inventory (PSI) were designed to 

identify risk of re-offending in spousal assault cases. (Three other instruments – Domestic 

Violence Risk Assessment Form, Lethality Checklist and Physical Abuse Scale, and Risk 

Assessment and Lethality Assessment – have separate lethality risk factors and re-assault or 

abuse-related factors.) 

Other differences follow from the purpose and intended use of the two types of approaches. The 

lethality assessments were designed to be used primarily for prevention, with information from 

victims. In contrast, most of the instruments designed to assess risk of re-assault were developed 

for use in the criminal justice (or military) system for sentencing, probation, bail and treatment 

decisions, with the offender as the primary respondent. For lethal risk assessment, ease of 

administration and brevity are extremely important. In criminal justice settings, more actuarial 

evaluations are feasible and important to conduct and many sources of data can be obtained. Both 

types of approaches are important and may involve different factors. It is far more difficult to 

assess predictive validity of the lethality assessment systems, however, because of the extremely 

low base rate of domestic homicide. 

Description and Validation of Instruments and Threat Assessment Methods 

Published data on the instruments is meager and independent evaluations are practically 

nonexistent (Roehl & Guertin, 1998, 2000). Many of the instruments/threat assessment methods 

are based on risk factor lists with no empirical research, but the MOSAIC-20 (De Becker, 1997) 

and the DA (Campbell, 1992; Campbell, 1995) were based on homicide case evaluations and 

research. The Domestic Violence Risk Assessment Form and the K-SID (Gelles, 1998) were 

based on independent domestic violence case evaluations. The development of the K-SID also 

utlized survey research. According to Roehl and Guertin (2000) and personal communication with 

authors, the SARA (Kropp, Hart, Webster, & Eaves, 1995; Kropp & Hart, 2000), K-SID (Gelles, 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 17

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
1998), DVSI (Williams, 1999), PSI (Pence, 1999) and DA (Campbell, 1992; Campbell, 1995) are 

currently part of ongoing validation studies with some preliminary data having been presented at 

conferences (Gelles, 1998; Kropp, 1998; Kropp & Hart, 2000; Williams, 1999). Validity data on the 

DVSI were recently published (Williams & Houghton, 2004). A study of the Navy Risk Assessment 

is also underway. Psychometric data on the DA (Campbell, 1995) have been published, and some 

independent research using the instrument has been conducted which will be reviewed below. 

Since this study was designed, description and data on two instruments have been published. The 

O.D.A.R.A. (Ontario Domestic Abuse Risk Assessment) was developed through a large Canadian 

database of domestic violence offenders and promising predictive validity data have been 

published (Hilton et al., 2004). The DVI and SARA are being used fairly widely but will not be 

tested in the proposed experiment. They will be described briefly below. 

SARA

The SARA (as well as the DVI) was designed to assess risk of re-offending in the criminal justice 

system. The SARA is described as an instrumental means of coding professional judgment (Kropp 

& Hart, 2000). A complete evaluation with the SARA requires psychological assessment of the 

perpetrator and clinical judgment. The SARA is currently being used widely in Canada and 

Vermont for probation supervision and treatment decisions and as part of a validation study in 

Colorado (Kropp & Hart, 2000; Roehl & Guertin, 2000; Williams, 1999). It was developed in the 

early 1990’s and is described as an assessment guide based on a thorough literature review, 

rather than as an actuarial instrument or psychological test (Kropp et al., 1995). It is recommended 

for use as part of an in-depth assessment to be used for judicial and probationary decisions. It has 

four different scoring approaches, including a 0-2 assessment of as well as absolute presence of 

each of 20 risk factors (with space for the evaluator to add other “considerations” which can also be 

rated or counted). In addition, there is a score consisting of the evaluator’s judgment of how many 

of the risk factors (including the additional considerations) are “critical” and an independent overall 

summary rating of risk to the partner and to others. The manual urges the evaluator to use as 

many sources of information as possible in filling out the SARA, including both victim and 

perpetrator interviews, additional criminal justice records, and standardized instruments, especially 

the Hare Psychopathy Checklist (Hare, 1991). 

Data on the SARA is based primarily on testing in Canada, with a primarily (80%) white population. 

In six samples (total N = 2681), the SARA has shown good internal consistency (Alpha = .62-.83) 

and item homogeneity (Kropp & Hart, 2000). Discriminant validity was strong: in a large sample (N 

= 1,010) of inmates, the SARA discriminated well between those with a spousal assault history and 

those without. In a smaller study (N = 102) of recidivists versus non recidivist spouse assaulters, 

the number of critical items score discriminated best between the two groups. In tests of construct 

validity, correlations of the spousal assault risk with other instruments assessing general risk of 

violence were moderate to low. Part of the explanation for these findings is that many spouse 

assaulters are not necessarily generally violent (Holtzworth-Munroe, & Stuart, 1994). 

In a more recent prospective study of 1465 male domestic violence offenders in Colorado (Williams 

& Guerra, 2003), the SARA was significantly associated with risk of reoffending according to 

reports from 125 female partners after six months and review of criminal justice records after 18 

months. The SARA correctly identified 66% of the cases for overall recidivism. 

The Domestic Violence Inventory – Risk and Needs Assessment (DVI)

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 18

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
The DVI is designed not only to assess risk of re-assault but also to assess treatment needs. 

Unlike the SARA, the DVI is a structured questionnaire to be completed by the perpetrator. It takes 

30-35 minutes to complete, has been translated into Spanish and information is available on the 

instrument on its web site. There are seven scales including one for truthfulness (the only such 

scale in the variety of instruments), alcohol and drug abuse scales, violence potential, and 

treatment needs. The scores are divided into categories of low, medium, problem, and severe risk. 

Self-published data are reported for more than 5000 respondents, but there have been no refereed 

publications on the instrument. Convergent construct validity shows correlations ranging from .54-

.78 with the MMPI. Reliability is supported by an internal consistency of .84-.91, but inter-rater 

reliability is low, ranging between .10 and .54. 

K-SID

The K-SID was developed from the extensive program of research of Richard Gelles (Gelles & 

Straus, 1990) as a screening instrument. It was explicitly designed as an actuarial assessment, 

although it does not yet have enough evaluation to be considered such. The K-SID consists of ten 

risk markers for re-assault with three categories of response for each item. Certain response 

categories merit points that are added for classification into low (0-3), moderate (4-6), high (7-10) 

and very high risk of re-offending. The summary score is not intended to be used for anything 

other than risk category classification and is not intended for use as a continuous variable. and 

didn't want the summary score to be used as a continuous variable. In the original instrument, the 

presence of either of two additional risk factors – previous domestic violence arrest and previous 

violation of a temporary or permanent protection order – put the perpetrator into the very high risk 

category regardless of the point total. After predictive validation testing by Lyon (1998), the 

previous domestic violence arrest item was eliminated as an automatic high-risk qualification. 

There is also a poverty chart to determine the answer to the income risk factor, a formula for 

determining “binge” alcohol use, and a severity and injury chart that does not factor into the score 

for risk classification. 

Gelles (1998) has reported data from several ongoing studies indicating support for internal 

consistency and discriminant group validity. Lyon has tested predictive validity over two years on a 

large sample of arrestees. On the basis of police and court records for offenders being arraigned in 

three Connecticut courts in 1996 (n=1014), Lyon found that the K-SID score significantly predicted 

re-arrest within one year. In a two-year follow-up, Lyon found that a “high-risk” classification 

significantly predicted a new domestic violence arrest, and that the overall score predicted better 

than a history of family violence arrests. In the “moderate,” “high” and “very high” risk categories

on the basis of total scores, 34-38% were re-arrested within two years (p<.0001). However, these 

three categories were very similar and Lyon concludes, therefore, that the instrument was most 

effective at predicting low risk: only 12% of those classified as low risk were arrested for a new 

family violence crime within two years. The K-SID is being used throughout Connecticut as a basis 

for criminal justice decisions including probation, incarceration and protection order conditions.

DVSI

The Domestic Violence Screening Inventory (DVSI) was developed by Kirk Williams and is being

used by Probation in Colorado to determine level of probation supervision. It is intended for use as 

a screen to be followed by more intensive evaluation with the SARA if the DVSI score suggests a 

high level of risk. The DVSI consists of twelve questions primarily related to criminal history of 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 19

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
domestic violence and other violent offenses, including arrests, convictions and violation of 

restraining orders. Employment status, recent separation, and presence of children during the 

incident are the other risk factors probed. A predictive validity test on the basis of criminal history 

was recently completed in a prospective study of 1465 male domestic violence offenders in 

Colorado (Williams & Guerra, 2003). The DVSI was significantly associated with risk of reoffending 

according to criminal justice records after 18 months and reported violence after 6 months from the 

125 female partners who provided information. Sixty-threepercent of the cases of overall 

recidivism were correctly classified (compared to 66% for the SARA, as above). 

Danger Assessment The DA is a measure designed to assist battered women in the assessment 

of their own risk of femicide (Campbell, 1986). The Danger Assessment (DA) was originally 

developed by the PI of this study (Campbell, 1986) with consultation and content validity support 

from battered women, shelter workers, law enforcement officials, and other clinical experts on 

battering. The initial items on the Danger Assessment instrument were developed from 

retrospective research studies of intimate partner homicide or serious injury (Campbell, 1981; 

Browne, 1987; Berk et al., 1983; Fagan et al., 1983). 

The first portion of the measure assesses severity and frequency of battering by presenting the 

woman with a calendar of the past year. The woman is asked to mark the approximate days when 

physically abusive incidents occurred, and to rank the severity of the incident on a scale of 1 to 5 

(where 1=slap, pushing, no injuries and/or lasting pain and 5=use of weapon, wounds from 

weapon). The calendar portion was conceptualized as a way to raise the consciousness of the 

woman and reduce the denial and minimization of the abuse, especially since using a calendar 

increases accurate recall in other situations (Campbell, 1995; Ferraro et al., 1983). In the original 

scale development, 38% of women who initially reported no increase in severity and frequency 

changed their response to “yes” after filling out the calendar (Campbell, 1986; Campbell, 1995). 

The second part of the DA was a 15-item yes/no dichotomous response format of risk factors 

associated with intimate partner homicide. Both portions of the instrument take a total of 

approximately 20 minutes to complete. The woman can complete the instrument by herself with 

professionals from the health care, criminal justice, or victim advocate systems assisting in the 

interpretation of the instrument within the context of her situation. The original DA was scored by 

counting the “yes” responses with no classification or cutoff score; a higher number indicates that 

more of the risk factors for femicide are present in the relationship. 

The initial studies using the DA instrument are described in detail elsewhere (Campbell, 1986,

1995). In the 15 research studies with reported data in which the DA has been used to date, 

reliability ranged from 0.60 to 0.86 (Campbell, 1986; Campbell, 1995; McFarlane et al., 1992; 

McFarlane et al., 1996; McFarlane et al., 1998; Woods, 1999; Silva et al., 1997). In the recent 11-

city femicide study, internal consistency ranged from .74 in the sample of 496 abused controls, to 

.75 in the sample of 183 attempted femicide victims and .80 in the 263 actual femicide sample. In 

two studies in which test-retest reliability was assessed, it ranged from 0.89 to 0.94 (Stuart et al., 

1989; Campbell, 1994). All samples include a substantial portion of minority women (primarily 

African-American and Latina) and women from a variety of settings. Internal consistency reliability 

estimates did not vary for African-American, Latina, and White women (Campbell, 1995). 

Discriminant group construct validity was supported by significant differences in mean scores 

among contrasting groups of women. The lowest mean score was found in the non-abused sample 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 20

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
with the highest score among the sample of women in the emergency department (Campbell, 

1995). In addition, the DA successfully discriminated between groups of abused and nonabused 

women in two studies (Woods, in press; McFarlane et al., 1998). Convergent construct validity has 

been supported in the majority of the studies with moderate to strong correlations with instruments 

measuring severity and frequency of domestic violence, including the Index of Spouse Abuse, the 

Conflict Tactics Scale and injury from abuse (Campbell, 1995; McFarlane et al., 1998), as well as 

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) (Woods, in press; Silva et al., 1997). 

The 11-city case control study (comparing actual and attempted femicide cases with those of 

physically abused or threatened women and non abused women) provided further validity data for 

the DA and indicated appropriate weighting of the items. The only factors from the DA that did not

show robust significant differences (p <.05; % differences >20) were child abuse (using the narrow 

operationalization of reported child abuse), victim suicidality, and perpetrator violence outside of 

the home (37-39% in the latter two categories). A factor not on the DA that was a significant 

differentiating item was stalking and harassing behaviors. The original DA demonstrated 

significant differences in mean scores between the abused controls and the actual and attempted 

femicide groups. 

A modification of the DA based on the results of 11-city femicide study with weighted scoring was 

submitted to ROC curve analysis with the area under curve .90 among the actual femicides and 

then tested among the attempted femicides resulting in a .92 area under the curve. Sensitivity 

(proportion of cases or women assaulted during follow-up who were correctly identified as high 

risk) is good (90%) at the lowest scoring level (named “variable danger”) with 86%, 83% and 57% 

at the next three levels of danger (“increased,” “severe” and “extreme danger”) among the actual 

femicides (and similar percentages among the attempteds). Specificity (abused controls) was 69% 

at the lowest (variable) level, 70% at Increased Danger, 80% at Severe Danger and 98% at the 

Extreme level of danger. In other words, only 2% of the women abused but not killed scored in the 

extreme level of danger, 20% in the Severe Danger range; 30% at Increased Danger and 31% at 

the Variable Danger Range. 

In addition, three independent predictive validity studies have been conducted of the DA. In one, 

Goodman and colleagues (2000) found that the DA successfully predicted reassault in a sample of 

92 battered women who had filed a protective order. Although there was only a 53% retention rate 

of the sample, the DA was a stronger predictor than the Revised Conflict Tactics Scale (Straus, 

1997), with a 4.2 vs. 2.8 odds ration per SD. Weisz, Tolman and Saunders (2000) found that 

women’s perception of danger was a stronger predictor than any of the 10 DA items (of the 15 on 

the original scale) available in the criminal justice record. However, it needs to be noted that only 

2/3 of the items on the DA were used and they were evaluated singly rather than in combination as 

intended. Even those items were not actually asked of the female partner as intended but coded 

from criminal justice records using slightly different operationalizations in several cases. In fact, 

the DA asks about victims their perception of perpetrator homicide capability, but this item was not 

included in the Weisz et al. evaluation. In an evaluation of 499 perpetrators in the criminal justice 

system, Heckert and Gondolf (2004) found that the items from the DA they were able to assess 

had a sensitivity of 66% but there were 33% false positives. Women’s perception of risk plus the 

DA was the best model (over SARA & K-SID) for predicting reassault, but women’s perception of 

risk by itself was not quite as predictive as the DA. 

DV-MOSAIC

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 21

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
The DV-MOSAIC is a computer-assisted method of threat assessment developed by Gavin de 

Becker & Associates (de Becker, 2005). DV-MOSAIC is not a predictive instrument. It is an 

overall method used to aid police officers in their assessments and investigations of domestic 

violence situations. Only part of the MOSAIC method is designed to apply predictive strategies to 

police officer and victim decision making. DV-MOSAIC aids in the assessment and consideration 

of hundreds of individual features of a domestic violence situation. Some questions and features 

are included because they are required components of police investigations, and are not expected 

to be predictive. Other questions and features are included because the developers and 

Development Team advisors believe they will enhance the quality of police investigations and 

assessments, or because they are perceived to increase the safety of a victim of abuse, and not 

because they are expected to be predictive. Some areas of inquiry are included within MOSAIC 

because the developers perceived them to be predictive on the basis of existing research, expert 

opinion, practitioner opinion, and practitioner experience. It is the ability to assess the likelihood of 

reassault of these specific areas of inquiry within DV-MOSAIC that are being evaluated as part of 

this study. 

As previously described, DV-MOSAIC was designed to be part of a comprehensive police 

investigation and assessment, rather than an instrument in the traditional sense. Answering the 

questions or probes that are part of the DV-MOSAIC threat assessment process is designed to

assess “the likelihood of escalation or violence between the person being pursued and the person 

under assessment,” according the introduction to MOSAIC manual, a confidential document. It is 

designed to evaluate the risk of escalation, continued violence and homicide by a man against his 

wife or girlfriend. De Becker emphasizes that the use of DV-MOSAIC is part of a process of risk 

assessment, a way of offering “the victim an opportunity to consider an organized overview of her 

situation.” “The intent is to improve the quality of assessments...to contribute to the” assessor’s 

“prediction” so that the assessor will then intervene effectively and also present the results to the 

victim so that she is better informed about the need for intervention. The introduction stresses that 

dangerousness is situational, not a permanent or stable attribute. DV-MOSAIC considers a violent 

disposition irrelevant, because we all have the potential to be dangerous, and people who lack a 

violent disposition may be dangerous under certain circumstances. Furthermore, for danger to be 

a present risk, there must be not only “sinister intent,” but also the ability and means to carry out 

the intent, and access to the victim. Harm is not restricted to physical injury: causing anxiety and 

fear and invading privacy is also harmful. Dangerousness applies not to an individual who may 

have shown warning signs, but to a relationship between the individual and his target. 

The manual warns that an accuracy rate with 10% false positives (people judged dangerous who 

will not, in fact, commit violence without any intervention) and 15% false negatives (people judged 

not dangerous but who will commit serious violence if there is no intervention) is unacceptable if 

applied to the population at large. The result would be to restrict the freedom of innocent people 

and to miss a number of cases of violence. The results would be no worse without risk 

assessment. De Becker argues, however, that the threat assessment method is not intended for 

use with the population at large, but only for assessing individuals who have already demonstrated 

an inclination toward violence against another specific individual. The MOSAIC is not used for 

intervention with the person (potential perpetrator) being assessed beyond those otherwise justified 

by criminal behavior. Robert J. Martin, Vice President of Gavin de Becker & Associates, and a 

veteran of the LAPD, describes the MOSAIC as a case screening assessment, a filter to 

accompany other forms of investigation. 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 22

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
The DV-MOSAIC consists of 46 questions (an additional question asks whether the victim will see 

the report) with multiple response categories. The response categories are sometimes complex, 

covering constellations or patterns rather than single features of the perpetrator or relationship. 

The program produces two scores: an IQ (Information Quotient) score, ranging from 1-200, based 

on the amount of information available for the assessment, and a Rating from 1-10, with 1 

representing the lowest level of risk and 10 the highest. Both scores are based on item weighting. 

Martin gives the example that the age of the perpetrator might be worth 2%, but knowing about the 

perpetrator’s ownership of weapons might be worth 6%: the “weapons” item therefore contributes 

more value to the IQ score. According to the developers, the 1-to-10 scale was suggested by 

MOSAIC co-developers at the U.S. Marshals Service because it is clear, familiar, and has 

consistent meaning to various users. They go on to state that it is not meant to imply that a 7 is

some precise scientific amount less significant than an 8 -- in other words, it is meant to be an 

ordinal, not ratio level scale. They also state that it is not meant to prescribe that some specific 

case-management response should follow a specific rating. Threat assessment practitioners are 

meant to use all their information and insight when making case-management decisions. The 

MOSAIC threat assessment purposefully uses the numerical scale rather than words to describe 

levels of threats to avoid the connotations and conclusions that words can convey, as opposed to 

allowing assessment practitioners to express conclusions based on more than just rating. 

The DV-MOSAIC measures many but not all the factors associated with risk of escalation or 

pursuit. The program is described as using a case-matching or template-matching procedure to 

produce the rating of risk. That is, the combination of features “matches cases that involved 

escalation and pursuit of encounters” or is “most similar to cases that have not escalated or 

pursued encounters” (Martin, MOSAIC-20 Manual, p. 2 of MOSAIC Overview). It assigns values to 

interrelated factors and compares them to cases where the outcome is known. 

The DV-MOSAIC produces a report for each assessment, giving the IQ score and rating, and a 

sentence describing the similarity of the profile to cases that have escalated to homicide (for a high 

score) or have not escalated to homicide (for a low score). The report also describes the answer to 

each item and explains the relevance of that item to assessing risk of homicide with the intent to 

provide education and training.

The development of MOSAIC is described as involving study of over 250,000 “communications” 

and 18,000 cases. It is not clear whether this description applies to all the MOSAIC programs – 

there are other programs for assessing threats against government officials, workplace violence, 

school violence and stalking – or specifically to DV-MOSAIC, designed for estimating risk of 

violence against women by husbands or boyfriends. The DV-MOSAIC was based on cases of 

intimate partner homicide from the LA police department. A utility of MOSAIC, according to its 

developers, is that it provides uniformity to assessment such that ten different people of different 

abilities and styles will come up with the same preliminary rating. However, no inter-rater reliability 

data are provided. In regard to accuracy, the developers state that a perfect predictive 

performance cannot be expected, but case management decisions can be improved by use of the 

system. The MOSAIC approach is similar to the approach Kropp (2004) endorses and describes 

as a “structured professional judgment.” De Becker and Associates also stress that the issue in 

threat assessment is prevention, not prediction, and that practitioners should seek to discover and 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 23

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
recognize the factors associated with escalation - and then intervene or encourage effective 

interventions in order to influence outcomes. 

The three instruments and one threat assessment method are summarized in Table B1. 

Table B1: Description of Four Risk Assessment Methods

Method Description Administration Primary intended uses 

Danger Assessment 

(Campbell, 1986, 

1995, 2003) 

Review of past year with a calendar1 to 

document severity and frequency of 

battering and 20 yes/no questions 

about risk factors. 

Scoring: -3 -40 & four risk categories 

(variable, increased, severe & 

extreme danger). 

Interview with the victim, 

usually by victim

advocate. 

Assess risk of extreme 

dangerousness and lethal 

violence for victim education, 

awareness, safety planning 

and service provision. 

DV-MOSAIC (Gavin 

de Becker & 

Associates, 2001) 

Computer-assisted method that 

includes 46 multiple response items

about risk and protective factors. 

Scoring: Program computes risk score 

of 1-10 and a missing data (IQ) score. 

Criminal justice 

professional enters 

responses after victim, 

perhaps offender and 

other interviews; reviews 

of criminal records and 

police reports. 2

Assess immediate, shortterm threat of severe or 

lethal domestic violence 

situations for victim 

awareness, safety planning, 

further investigation, and 

criminal justice responses. 

Domestic Violence 

Screening Instrument 

(Williams & 

Houghton, 2004) 

12 questions given 0 - 3 points, 

primarily related to offender’s criminal 

history, employment, & several other 

risk factors. 

Scoring: Risk score 0-30, and two risk 

categories (not high risk & high risk). 

Probation or other court 

officer completes 

instrument based on 

offender’s criminal record 

and interview. 

Assess risk of recidivism/reassault for supervision, 

probation/parole, and other 

offender-related decisions. 

Kingston Screening 

Instrument for 

Domestic Violence 

(Gelles, 1988) 

10 questions about risk factors, each 

with 2 to 3 response categories, and a 

offender’s poverty status scale. 

Scoring: Risk scores of 0 to 10 and 

four risk categories (low, moderate, 

high, or very high). 

Offender and victim 

interviews and review of 

police reports by probation 

or other court officer. 

Assess risk of recidivism/reassault for offender charging 

and supervision decisions, 

set conditions for release, 

probation, and protective 

orders. 

Victim assessment of 

risk (Goodman, 

Dutton 2000; Heckert 

& Gondolf, 2004; 

Weisz, Tolman, 

Saunders 2000) 

2 questions about victim’s perception 

of the likelihood that she will be 

physically assaulted or seriously hurt 

by abuser in the next year 

Scoring: victim rates likelihood on a 

scale of 1-10 

1The calendar portion of the DA was not used in this study. 

2 The DV-MOSAIC “domains of inquiry” were reformatted by the investigators as a victim interview 

Need for Assessment of Risk in Intimate Partner Violence 

Benefits to the Criminal Justice System

Much progress has been made in developing risk assessment instruments and systems in the field 

of intimate partner violence. Specifying the type of violence increases the accuracy of prediction, 

and there is no doubt that instruments specific to this field are needed (Monahan, 1984). For 

instance, psychopathy (Hare, 1991) has been found to be strongly predictive of much of violent 

behavior, but Kropp has not found it to be even moderately related to the risk of intimate partner 

reassault using the SARA (Kropp & Hart, 2000). Another strategy to increase statistical accuracy 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 24

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
of instruments is to increase the base rates of the behavior being predicted by using re-assault 

rates, because about 25-50% of batterers re-offend, as compared to 3% who commit potentially

lethal violence (Dutton, 1995) and 2). Measurement sensitivity can also be enhanced by going 

beyond arrest as an operationalization of reassault and, for example, using partner reports of 

violence. 

 

In order to improve the assessment of risk in intimate partner violence, more testing is needed of 

the instruments and methods already developed. Great ingenuity is needed in order to design 

evaluations that still provide for the safety of victims. Instruments also need to be evaluated in 

terms of their cultural appropriateness. Going beyond ordinary translation of instruments, attention 

needs to be paid to whether or not the actual risk factors make sense in different populations and 

whether psychometric properties hold in different ethnic and linguistic groups. 

One Specific Potential Victim – Safety and Process Issues

For much of violence prediction, the safety of the general public is at risk rather than that of a 

specific individual. In contrast, intimate partner violence risk assessment relates to risk to one 

particular victim (or as in the case of a change in partners, a second person). It has long been 

recognized that the battered woman victim has to be central to the process of intimate partner risk 

assessment, in terms of both her perception of risk and safety planning (Campbell, 1986; Campbell 

& Stuart, 1989; Hart, 1988). Many batterer programs are in touch with the partners for purposes of 

safety planning and service referral. Some programs also obtain information from partners about 

reassault and psychological abuse either for program evaluation or for monitoring of progress. 

There is concern about victim safety, however, when victims are used to inform on progress or 

recidivism to the program, especially when new offenses must be reported back to the court or 

probation (O’Sullivan, 1998). 

All of the systems that interact with battered women – health care, criminal justice, and social 

service – need to keep in mind the “duty to protect” as well as duties to warn (Campbell, 1994; 

Hart, 1988). All of the systems have responsibilities in terms of decisions about what is done with 

the perpetrator but also what protections are in place for victims. Risk assessment has the 

potential to serve a critical role for law enforcement, the judiciary, probation, victim advocates 

inprosecutor’s programs, and the rest of the criminal justice system, as well as shelters, other 

victim advocacy organizations, and ED and other health care professionals in aiding decisions 

about what actions they need to take. Professionals, agencies and communities that have adopted 

or are planning to adopt formal methods of risk assessment need to know which instruments and 

approaches have statistical support for their accuracy and which are most useful in terms of ease 

of implementation for their particular purpose. However, no method of prediction will ever be 

perfect. Victims must all have basic safety measures available to them, access to police when a 

crime is committed, and safe shelter, no matter what a risk assessment indicates. 

Conclusions

Continued efforts to develop a valid and comprehensive list of risk factors for intimate partner 

homicide are necessary. The field is seeking more accurate assessment of potential lethality in 

domestic violence relationships than the instruments and systems available can provide. Clinicians 

have been held accountable for not adequately predicting and protecting clients from potential 

danger (Hart, 1988; Litwack & Schlesinger, 1999; Mulvey & Lidz, 1995). In medical settings, legal 

experts generally agree that if a patient is a serious threat to someone else, the therapist or health 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 25

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
care provider must warn the potential victim (Campbell, 1994). Many domestic violence experts 

also feel a responsibility to conduct a separate assessment of the potential risk for homicide for 

victims as a basis for safety planning (Hart, 1988). Use of an instrument or threat assessment 

method may augment clinical or professional judgment in all the relevant systems (criminal justice, 

victim advocacy and physical and mental health systems) by ensuring that the risk factors specific 

to intimate partner homicide are assessed. In addition, an effective “coordinated community 

response” of victim assistance, batterer programs, community agencies, courts, police, probation, 

and health care could be improved by having a common language to indicate elevated risk and a 

way of selecting cases for intensive responses. 

Actuarial methods for risk assessment in intimate partner violence situations are beginning to be 

tested but this testing is only in the beginning stages. Well-substantiated instrumentation, with 

independent validation and the kind of meta-analyses available in the area of sexual assault are 

still several years away. Several instruments have been developed, but as yet published 

psychometric data are sparse and predictive validity studies results are only beginning to be 

published on any of the instruments. The research reported here significantly advances the field by 

providing a prospective validity evaluation of three of the instruments and the one threat 

assessment method using sophisticated analysis techniques. This advance will be important in 

addressing the safety of battered women. 

C. METHODS 

The methodology of the study was largely developed during the planning study. They 

were complicated, involving the extensive development of measures, arrangements with multiple 

sites, hiring and training of staff, planning recruitment of participants, etc. At all times, one of the 

paramount goals was to keep victims safe. 

 

Measures 

The central measures of the study were the baseline and follow-up interviews, which had 

five components: 

1. Demographics and background information on the relationship with the offender (at T2 

– the current status of the relationship was asked). 

2. History of abuse in the relationship and over the past six months (at T2 – abuse since 

the first interview). 

3. Actions taken by the victim or the criminal justice or other systems that could mitigate 

her risk (repeated at T2). 

4. Risk assessment (1 lethal risk and 1 recidivism risk instrument plus 19 “non-redundant 

questions” and self-perceived risk at T1 (at T2 - repeat of one of the two risk 

questionnaires administered at T1 plus four or five non-redundant items and selfperceived risk). 

5. Impact of the questionnaire on perception of risk and self-protective actions. 

The other major measure used was recidivism by the offender after the baseline interview, 

measured by arrest data provided by state criminal justice agencies. These measures are more 

fully described below. 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 26

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Demographics and background on the relationship

In addition to the standard questions about age, race and ethnicity, and educational 

attainment of the offender and the victim, questions were added at T2 to learn more about the 

cultural background of the victim and offender. These questions were modeled on the US Census 

questions. At T1, we asked about country of birth of the victims. (We did not want to ask 

questions that could be interpreted by the victim as interest in her immigration status.) At T2, we

asked country of origin of ancestors of US born participants, country of origin of the offender. and 

language spoken at home. In regard to the relationship, we ascertained legal status and level of 

current and past involvement. 

History of abuse in the relationship

This information constituted our outcome variable at T2, but also provided a history of the severity 

and types of abuse. We used items from the Women’s Experience of Battering (WEB; Hall-Smith, 

Smith & Earp, 1999) to assess the victim’s psychological experience of abuse, items from the 

HARASS (Sheridan, 1998), to tap into stalking and harassment, and items from the Revised 

Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS2; Straus, Hamby et al., 1995) to assess physical and verbal abuse. 

Items from the CTS2 were used to construct a severity of injury index as an outcome measure, 

informed by the medical knowledge of the principal investigator. 

The injury items used to construct the severity of injury index were drawn from the answers of the 

following question: 

“Please tell me whether you ever had any of the following injuries because of a fight with your 

partner.” [For yes answers, follow up with: “Did it happen in the past six months.”] 

Table C1. Injury Items 

Physical pain that still hurt the next day 

Sprain, bruise or small cut 

Blacked out from being hit on the head 

Broken bone 

A permanent impairment or disability, such as loss of hearing, sight, or difficulty walking 

Internal injuries to vital organs 

Lost consciousness due to him choking you 

Lost consciousness for more than an hour due to head injuries 

Lost so much blood you had to receive a transfusion 

Needed surgery to treat an injury from a fight 

Been hospitalized or in rehab for more than four days because of injuries from your partner 

Has he done anything that might have killed your or nearly killed you, whether or not he intended 

to? 

Did you ever suffer a miscarriage because of a fight with your partner? 

Did he try to kill you?

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 27

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Severity of Abuse Outcome Variable

 

The injury items from the CTS2 and the stalking and threatening items from the HARASS 

instrument were used to construct a scale of severity of outcomes at T2 for analyzing the accuracy 

of predictions. This scale was not strictly ordinal, because, for example, stalking as an outcome 

could not be clearly assigned a level. Each item was assigned to one of the following outcome 

variable levels: 

Table C2. Abuse Outcome Severity Categories (Primary Dependent Variable at follow-up) 

None 

Verbal abuse (e.g. name calling) 

Psychological abuse and harassment (e.g. controlling behavior) 

Stalking and threats 

Physical abuse: Low (e.g., grabbing, slapping; causing bruises, small cuts) 

Physical abuse: Medium (e.g., kick, slam up against a wall) 

Physical abuse: High (e.g., strangling, sexual abuse with force, serious injury such as broken 

bone) 

Physical abuse: Very High (e.g., use of a weapon, potentially life-threatening injury) 

Each participant’s outcome was assigned to the highest level of abuse she experienced during the 

period between baseline and follow-up interviews. Concurrent construct validity of the scale was 

supported by significant and moderately strong correlations with the CTS2 severe abuse with 

frequency weights variable (r=.524; p<.000), and with minor abuse (.602; p < .000), a summary 

score based on the WEB items (r=.235; p<.000), and a summary score based on the HARASS 

items (r=.168; p<000). 

Protective actions

We were concerned about the possibility that a risk assessment instrument or method might 

predict a high level of risk but appear to be invalid when measured against outcomes because, 

although the risk was real, victims or the systems from which we recruited them took actions that 

mitigated that risk. To control for that possibility, we created questions to determine what 

protective actions had been taken by the victim or systems. This set of questions also gives us 

information about effective actions and interventions. 

Questions about “self-protective actions” included securing weapons or items for self-defense, 

changing locks, and “going someplace where he couldn’t find you.” (See Table C3.) Participants 

were asked whether they had received counseling, and if so where, and whether they had adopted 

specific elements of safety planning usually recommended by victim assistance providers. They 

were asked about protection orders, reports to the police, and signed complaints. In addition to 

questions about whether the victim had gone somewhere inaccessible to her abuser, we also 

asked whether he had been someplace that made it impossible for him to get access to her (e.g., 

jail, out of the country, etc.). 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 28

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Table C3. Self-Protective Actions and Interventions in Past 6 Months 

(Possible mitigation of risk)

PROTECTION ORDER/RESTRAINING ORDER – sought, received 

ARREST for most recent incident 

VICTIM SERVICES - safety planning, counseling, legal assistance, shelter, help with/for children; 

agency or other provider 

NO CONTACT – LENGTH OF TIME: 

• Period when she was someplace where he couldn’t find or see her (shelter, 

friend’s/relative’s/hotel, out of town, jail, hospital/other) 

• Period when he was someplace where he couldn’t see her (jail, military, out of town, 

residential treatment program, hospital, other) 

• Period when they didn’t see each other because one or both chose not to 

MEDICAL TREATMENT for trauma or injuries 

SAFETY PLANNING 

• Left documents, spare keys with friend or relative in case need to leave suddenly

• Alerted family, friends, neighbors and/or children about violence 

• Cell phone, home alarm, lock change or other form of security 

LAW ENFORCEMENT INVOLVEMENT - Called 911/reported to police/signed a complaint 

SELF DEFENSE - Acquired mace, pepper spray or weapon 

BATTERER PROGRAM - Abuser ordered to batterer program; if so, attended? 

Finally, we asked if there had been a period when they hadn’t seen each other because one or 

both of them chose not to have contact. 

Analyses of risk assessment instruments, methods and questions were conducted with the 

outcome measures, and again controlling for the protective actions – particularly actions that 

should have resulted in the abuser being unable to contact the participant in person. 

Risk Assessment

Participants were randomly assigned to receive either the Danger Assessment or a questionnaire 

we developed from the DV-MOSAIC areas of inquiry, and either the DVSI or the K-SID (random 

assignment is described later). In addition, all participants received another set of questions at T1 

that do not constitute an instrument but that covered areas of possible risk prediction that were not 

included on any one of the four instruments (these came to be called the “non-redundant” items, 

meaning they were possible risk factors that did not appear on the instruments being tested). 

These questions were developed during the planning phase through a process of reviewing over 

20 other risk assessment instruments or sets of questions currently in use and comparing them to 

the domains covered in the four sets of questions we were testing. From the pool of questions 

developed in this way, we selected those questions that had some basis in the research literature 

for having promise of being associated with dangerousness of a batterer. 

Finally, we created questions on self-perceived risk, based in the literature that showed that victims 

are accurate in assessing lethal risk. We based these questions on Weisz, Tolman & Saunders 

(2000) in asking victims to rate the risk that their partner would abuse them in the next six months 

on a scale of one to ten. We first framed the question as the likelihood that the partner or exNIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 29

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
partner would hurt them seriously. Many women answered in the affirmative, according to the 

interviewers, interpreting the question broadly, as meaning that he would do something hurtful, 

such as trying to take their children. We quickly added a second question on the likelihood that he 

would be physically abusive. 

Impact of the questionnaire

As one of the purposes of risk assessment can be to raise the awareness of the victim about 

possible danger, we wanted to discover whether they felt that the interview process and answering 

the questions had changed their assessment of danger. To detect whether the questionnaire had 

an impact on their perception of risk, we asked the two questions on self-perceived risk at the 

beginning of the interview, immediately after the demographic questions, and again at the end of 

the interview. Also, at the end of the interview we asked in an open-ended question whether there 

was anything they thought they would do differently in the future as a result of answering the 

questions. In the follow-up interview, we asked the self-perceived risk questions at the end of the 

questionnaire, and asked if they had done anything differently since the previous interview as a 

result of participating in the study. Participants were given no information regarding their risk 

assessment scores. 

Administration of Measures

Table C4 summarizes the major components of the baseline and follow-up interviews. 

Table C4. Timing of Administration of Measures 

Domain/Questions Baseline Follow-up

Demographics √ Added questions on batterer race/ethnicity, 

victim language preference and origins 

Relationship status √ √

Self-perceived risk (1) √

Self-protective measures & 

interventions √ √ Since last interview 

History of abuse (WEB, 

Harassment & stalking, CTS, 

injuries) 

√ ever & past 6 

months √ Since last interview 

Lethal risk assessment 1⁄2 DA; 1⁄2 DVMOSAIC* 1⁄4 DA; 1⁄4 DV-MOSAIC 

Recidivism risk assessment 1⁄2 K-SID; 1⁄2 DVSI 1⁄4 K-SID; 1⁄4 DVSI 

Non-redundant risk 

assessment items 

1-19 1⁄4 4 or 5 questions 

Self-perceived risk (repeated at 

end of interview) 

√ √

Impact of interview on 

thinking/plans √

Retrospectively – Did you do anything 

differently? 

* Questions based on the DV-MOSAIC areas of inquiry

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 30

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Research Sites 

New York City Sites - Safe Horizon (Chris O’Sullivan, co-PI)

Safe Horizon is the nation’s largest victim assistance agency. A private non-profit, it 

operates in all five boroughs of New York City and provides a range of services, from concrete 

assistance and advocacy through short- and long-term counseling. Among the services offered to 

victims of domestic violence are the New York City Domestic Violence Hotline; emergency shelter 

and transitional housing; a reception center and advocacy in the city’s five family courts; advocacy 

and counseling in the city’s five criminal courts; community offices in each of the five boroughs, 

which provide counseling and support groups; and legal representation in family courts. The 

research project capitalized on and benefited from the good will that these services and Safe 

Horizon field staff have created, among clients as well as court personnel and judges. Safe 

Horizon program directors opened doors for us, made introductions, found interview rooms for us 

in their offices and solved problems. 

Interview and Recruitment Sites 

New York City Family Courts. Judge Joseph Lauria, the Chief Administrative Judge for the five 

New York City family courts endorsed the study and directed the supervising judges of each 

county’s family court to cooperate in the study. Ultimately, arrangements were made to recruit 

from and conduct interviews in the Family Courts in Queens, Kings (Brooklyn) and the Bronx 

counties. Different procedures were approved by the Supervising Judges in these three courts. 

In the Brooklyn, Queens and Bronx Family Courts, three part-time bilingual interviewers 

approached women who had just been granted an Order of Protection (OP) and interviewed them 

while they were waiting for the court order to be processed in the Court Action Processing (CAP) 

Unit, where petitioners pick up their orders. The Bronx and Brooklyn courts permitted the 

interviewer to sit in the court and hear the cases. Then they could approach women with qualifying 

cases after they left the court. In Queens, the interviewer had to approach women people waiting 

outside the CAP Unit – who might be waiting for a variety of other orders on other matters, such as 

adoption and custody. 

Potential participants were screened first to ascertain that they were receiving an order against 

an intimate partner (father of their children, husband or ex-husband), and that they had 

experienced violence or threats of violence within the preceding six months. If the petitioner 

qualified and was interested in the study, she was usually taken to a private office in the court 

allocated to Safe Horizon. The interviewer would let the Court Officer know whom she was 

interviewing so that the woman could be alerted when her order was ready. Women interviewed in 

the court were read a consent form that differed in one respect from other consent forms: they 

were told that they would receive one payment of $50 for the follow-up interview six months later, 

rather than two payments of $20 and $30. The Court did not permit us to pay participants at the 

court, and they did not want the payment to occur while the case was still before the court. A total 

of 630 women recruited from the family courts completed baseline interviews, including 252 

interviewed in the Kings County (Brooklyn) Family court, 213 in the Bronx Family court, and 165 in 

the Queens Family Court, by six interviewers fluent in English and Spanish. 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 31

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
NYC Domestic Violence Shelters. The second major source of participants in New York City 

was domestic violence shelters. Shelters provided a safe way for victims to participate. Safe 

Horizon operates domestic violence shelters and “safe dwellings” throughout New York City. The 

latter are free-standing apartments where one or two families may be housed; residents receive

services at a nearby Safe Horizon community office. To recruit residents of shelters and safe 

dwellings, the bilingual NYC project director, sometimes accompanied by a bilingual interviewer, 

would attend the shelter’s weekly residents’ meeting at the shelter or community office and briefly

present the study. Women would sign up, and be interviewed throughout the day after the 

meeting. They were paid $20 at the completion of the interview. In addition to six shelters 

operated by Safe Horizon, an emergency domestic violence shelter operated by another private 

non-profit, Volunteers of America, allowed us to recruit and interview residents for the study. 

Women are referred to shelters in a different borough from their home borough for security 

reasons. Women were interviewed in three shelters in Brooklyn (65), one in Staten Island (37), 

one in the Bronx (44), one in Queens (21) and a new shelter that Safe Horizon opened in 

Manhattan late in the collection of baseline data (10). Altogether, 177 women residing in New York 

City domestic violence shelters were interviewed at baseline. In theory, the shelters keep 

information about where the women relocate when they leave shelter. All of the participants 

interviewed in shelters at baseline agreed to sign a waiver allowing the shelter to give us their new 

phone number and address when we were ready to re-contact them for the follow up study. 

Safe Horizon Community Offices. Safe Horizon Community Offices in the five boroughs 

provide counseling, advocacy and referrals for victims of domestic violence. Attempts were made 

to recruit participants from among the community office clients, but these efforts were not so 

successful and efforts were redirected to the more productive sites described above – the family 

courts and shelters. The procedures for recruiting from the community offices included meeting 

with the staff to present the project and ask for referrals to the study, posting flyers, and an 

interviewer visiting and trying to recruit from the waiting room. The most effective method turned 

out to be individual counselors (or the community office director) referring clients to the project. 

The counselor would call the NYC project director with an interested client, and she would make an 

appointment to interview the participant at the community office or at the research office. 

Altogether, 11 women from Safe Horizon’s Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Bronx Community 

Offices were interviewed. 

Johns Hopkins University Sites – New York City Hospitals (J. Campbell, PI)

Dr. Campbell established relationships with three public hospitals in New York City

(Harlem Hospital Center in Manhattan; Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn; and Lincoln Hospital in 

the Bronx); a 4th hospital (St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital) was brought in during the last two weeks 

of baseline recruitment. In each hospital setting, protocols were established with hospital 

personnel to identify IPV victims coming to the attention of the Emergency Department and 

introduce those women not too acutely ill to the study. 

The planned recruitment protocol needed considerable adjustment at each hospital. Some 

of the difficulties were attributable to personnel and procedural changes that occurred between the 

time the original protocol was written and the eventual start of the project (delayed due to the 

shutdown of Johns Hopkins’s IRB then to the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks – see implementation 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 32

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
challenges). Other changes were accommodations to difficulties inherent in working in a crisis 

setting (e.g., long emergency room waits, such that women were exhausted and needed to leave 

by the time they came to our attention) with a low-income and/or transient population (e.g., women 

would agree to return, but then would not; women had no phone numbers to give us, and no 

person they trusted to give us as an alternate contact). 

By the end of our recruitment, procedures across hospitals were quite different. For 

example, at Kings County Hospital, a staff research nurse conducted the interview in person, often 

on the same day the woman was seen in the hospital. At Harlem Hospital, the Director of the 

Center for Victim Support interviewed women who came to her office from various sources, 

including a support group for battered women. At Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, all women were 

recruited from a battered women’s support group and interviewed by a Johns Hopkins postdoctoral fellow, who is also an RN. At St. Luke’s, the interviews were done on site by the postdoctoral fellow, or over the phone by the project director at Johns Hopkins (except for one interview 

in Spanish conducted by the Safe Horizon project director). While our expectations were that we 

would recruit 100 women per hospital setting, only 30 women total were recruited across all four 

hospitals. 

Los Angeles Sites – Justice Research Center (Jan Roehl, co-PI)

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. In 1998, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s 

Department (LASD) implemented a special domestic violence response program in three of the 

department’s 18 stations. Called STOP, for Safety Through Our Perseverance, the program was 

staffed by full-time deputies specially trained in domestic violence situations, who were to visit IPV 

victims at the scene of the incident if the STOP deputy was on duty and available then or within 48 

hours of the incident if the STOP deputy could not respond to the 911. When on duty, the STOP 

deputies interviewed victims after regular deputies responded to the 911 call and arrested the 

offender or took other immediate action. In one LASD station, a victim advocate regularly rode with 

the STOP deputy. The STOP deputies’ purpose was to provide greater safety for the victim, 

provide immediate victim assistance, and gather important evidence in a timely manner to improve 

prosecution. In 1999, when our working relationship with LASD began in earnest, the STOP 

deputies were interviewing a good portion of the IPV victims using the MOSAIC-20. 

Data collection began in early 2002, with two full-time interviewers collecting incident 

reports from four stations (located in East L.A., Industry, Norwalk, and Pico Rivera) and the 

Altadena Police Department every week or two. Altadena Police Department is a small department 

near Pasadena, and was included at the request of the STOP commander who knew the Altadena 

Police Chief well. Office space was rented for the interviewers within a domestic violence 

advocacy organization centrally located in Pasadena. This arrangement provided the interviewers 

with safety, access to needed office services, and support from the DV advocates. 

LASD ended the STOP program in January 2003 due to budget constraints (and grant 

support ending). JRC worked with domestic violence unit supervisors in the four STOP stations 

that were participating in the study at that time, and all agreed to continue to give us access to the 

incident reports through regular deputies. We were able to work out a similar arrangement with the 

Lakewood station, which did not have a STOP program. A handful of cases also entered the study 

from the Palmdale, Lancaster, and Carson STOP stations, through the central STOP office. The 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 33

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Palmdale and Lancaster stations receive a large number of domestic violence calls, but the STOP 

program there was reluctant to participate in the study because they believed it would interfere with 

the calls the local domestic violence agency made to the victims. 

 

Participants were contacted by phone and given the option of completing the interview by 

phone or in person. Nearly all preferred to be interviewed by phone. The cost in interviewer travel 

time and mileage to do in-person interviews was substantial in L.A. At the end of 2002, we closed 

the Pasadena office and continued the interviews with one-L.A. based interviewer, who continued 

to pick up the incident reports from the LASD stations. Baseline and follow-up interviews were 

conducted by phone by two interviewers based in JRC’s office. This approach was more 

productive and economical than maintaining office space in the LA area and supporting full-time 

interviewers At all times, at least one of our interviewers was Spanish-speaking. We conducted 

399 baseline interviews with women who had a case with the LASD. 

 

Table C5. Baseline Interviews Completed by Site and Modality

Site # Baseline Interviews Primary Modality 

NYC Family Courts 630 In person 

LASD 399 Phone

NYC Shelters 177 In person 

LA Shelter 60 In person 

NYC Hospitals 30 In person (and phone) 

NYC Community Offices 11 In person 

Total 1307 68% in person

Los Angeles shelters. The L.A.-based interviewers also interviewed women staying at a 

shelter in Downey, California. The interviewers visited the shelter every 45 to 60 days (45 days was 

the maximum stay) and interviewed women in person after obtaining informed consent. Typically 

four to six women were interviewed each visit by each interviewer. A total of 60 interviews were 

conducted at the shelter. 

Procedures

Although specific procedures varied from site to site, there were commonalties across sites 

that will be described here. 

Training and Staffing

JRC developed a comprehensive Interviewer’s Manual, which contained background 

information on the study, data collection procedures for the field sites, answers to frequently asked 

questions, and specific instructions for obtaining informed consent, conducting the interviews, 

ensuring victim safety, handling difficult situations, record keeping, and reporting to the central 

project staff. In January, 2002, the three PI’s conducted a two-day training session in Pasadena. 

Attending the training were the two LA interviewers for JRC and the NYC project director and 

interviewer/translator. STOP deputies and their sergeant also attended the first part of this training, 

and Bob Martin, Vice President of Gavin de Becker Associates, visited the training and spoke 

about the philosophy behind the MOSAIC threat assessment method. Additional interviewers were 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 34

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
trained at JRC and Safe Horizon later in the project. 

There was an overall project manager at Johns Hopkins, responsible for staying in touch 

with the interviewers at the other sites, dealing with the IRB at Johns Hopkins and the NYC 

hospitals, providing materials to the sites, and receiving the questionnaires and entering the data. 

Three people filled this position over the course of the project. 

At Safe Horizon in New York City, there was a bilingual project director (MA/MSW) and 

three bilingual (English-Spanish) field interviewers, one for each court. The Project Director also 

did interviews in the shelters, as well as managing the staff, data, and payments to participants. 

The project went through two teams of interviewers and two project directors. One of the first team 

of interviewers stayed on in the office to conduct quality control and ongoing training of 

interviewers. One of the second team of field interviewers stayed on after follow-up calls were 

complete to manage the data and organize the criminal justice data search. 

The Justice Research Center, which is based 300 miles north of Los Angeles in Pacific 

Grove, initially hired two fulltime Los Angeles-based interviewers, one of whom was fluent in 

Spanish. A project director at JRC oversaw data collection procedures, supervised the 

interviewers, developed a computerized instrument (subsequently unused) and managed the data 

flow. 

Recruitment Procedures

Recruitment procedures for the smaller sites (shelters and hospitals) were described under 

those sites. Recruitment procedures for the two primary sites, NYC Family Courts and LASD 

cases, will be described below. 

NYC Family Courts. Safe Horizon interviewers recruited participants from family courts in 

Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens. The recruiting approach varied depending on factors such as the 

Supervising Judge’s preferences, the skills of the interviewer, and the overall environment of the 

court. Generally, petitioners wait many hours outside the court waiting for their case to be called. 

Under our agreement with the court, we could not interview them before their court appearance, 

however. In some cases, the interviewer might screen the women, and then wait until they exited 

the court before recruiting them for the study. In the Bronx and Brooklyn Family Courts, 

interviewers would observe courtroom proceedings. Once the interviewer learned that the woman 

was there for domestic violence, she would exit the courtroom and wait for the petitioner outside 

(hearings on individual petitions typically last ten minutes). After the hearing, there is another long 

wait before the orders are written up in the Court Action Processing (CAP) Unit. At that point, the 

interviewers in Brooklyn and the Bronx approached the potential participant identified in court and 

invited her to participate in the study. 

In addition, interviewers would recruit from the waiting area outside the CAP Unit (and this 

was the only method used in the Queens Family Court). To minimize sample bias, all women in 

the waiting area were invited to participate in the study and were screened. In order to ensure the 

safety of women, interviewers did not approach women who were sitting next to a man. 

Interviewers also used the Safe Horizon Reception Center in the court to recruit women. As with 

the recruitment of women in the waiting rooms, interviewers would ask everyone in the Reception 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 35

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Center to participate in the study. Finally, flyers with the 1-800 number established for the study 

were posted in Safe Horizon Community Offices and the Family Court Reception Centers (for 

domestic violence victims). Women could call in to learn more about the study. Voice mail on the 

line identified the office as “Women’s Health Survey.” 

LASD. After interviewers received the incident reports from LASD, they entered basic 

information into a database, in part to prevent women from entering the study twice due to 

additional incidents, and onto a Call Log, used to track the status of calls to the women. The 

interviewer then attempted to reach the woman by phone. The interviewers were instructed to 

make at least five calls to each potential participant, varying the time of day and day of week. In 

reality, many more calls were typically made. A huge number of cases received from the LASD 

had wrong, disconnected, or false phone numbers (interviewers called the “Time” lady more than 

once). Safety measures were implemented as well. 

Interview Process

Phone interview procedures. These procedures were used at baseline for the LASD 

sample, and with all participants for the follow-up interviews. When a potential participant was 

reached, the interviewer first made sure it was a safe time to talk and then introduced her to the 

study. If she agreed to participate, her informed consent was obtained and a Contact Sheet was 

completed. The interview was conducted then if possible or an appointment was scheduled to do 

so as soon as possible. Each participant was offered $20 for the baseline interview and $30 for the 

follow-up interview. Money orders were sent to the address of her choice following each interview. 

In-person interview procedures. The interviewer began by reading or summarizing the 

consent form to the participant. (In the courts, because the judges were concerned about payment 

to the participant, this section of the consent form was not read.) The participant and interviewer 

each signed two copies of the consent form, one for the participant and one for the research 

records. Participants were told that if they felt it was unsafe to keep the consent form with them, 

we would keep their copy and provide it to them whenever they wanted it. 

Comparison of phone to in-person interviews. Conducting the in-person interviews in 

Family Court, interviewers felt they were able to recruit women who might have been reluctant to 

participate if they had been contacted by phone in a cold call, partly because of the long wait at the 

courthouse and partly because of the personal contact. Contrasting the baseline in-person 

interviews with the follow-up interviews by phone, the Safe Horizon staff found that, in the follow-up 

interviews, the women were less apt to cry (perhaps a function of time as well as modality), and did 

not disclose as much. They tended to give monosyllabic answers and run through the interview in 

a more methodical way. There were fewer distractions on the telephone, from children and other 

activities in the court. 

Offender and Contact Information. The second step of the interview was getting 

information on the offender and contact information for the victim. Information collected on the 

offender included name and aliases, address, date of birth, and, if she knew it, Social Security 

number. In Los Angeles, the LASD incident reports contained this offender information, plus a 

driver’s license number and other demographic information (race, for example). 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 36

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Contact information collected from the participants included a mailing address (to which 

reminder letters for the second interview and postal money orders would be sent), their own phone 

numbers, and the “number of someone who will always know where you are.” Quite a few women 

said there was no one.. When initial interviews produced no contact numbers, interviewers were 

trained to prompt participants – “Is there a friend; relative - mother or sister or aunt; a neighbor?” 

The prompt was often effective in producing a number. 

In New York, the women would sometimes name a case manager. To accommodate 

these responses, a confidentiality waiver form was produced that could be presented to the case 

manager giving permission to give contact information to the researchers. The women were 

encouraged to tell this “alternate contact” that they were participating in a study and that it would be 

okay to give us contact information when we called. It is our impression that alternate contacts 

usually were not informed about the study. 

We offered the women a cover story that we would use when we called back – “women’s 

health survey” – and asked if that would be okay or if they preferred a different cover story. Most 

women agreed, except for those who said that no cover story was necessary. (In the second year 

of data collection, Safe Horizon established an 800 toll free number. Women were encouraged to 

call in to the number if they moved or got a new number.) 

Random Assignment. Each participant received the main interview plus one of the two 

lethal risk assessment instruments/methods and one of the two instruments designed to assess 

risk of re-assault. The order of the risk assessment measures was counterbalanced, resulting in 

eight T1 interview conditions, as listed in the table below. 

Table C6 – Time 1 Assessment Pair 

Condition T1 Assessment Pair 

1 K-SID DV-MOSAIC 

2 DV-MOSAIC K-SID 

3 K-SID DA 

4 DA K-SID 

5 DVSI DV-MOSAIC 

6 DV-MOSAIC DVSI 

7 DVSI DA 

8 DA DVSI 

When each interviewer started, she was assigned a randomly generated number 

(sometimes using a computer program, sometimes pulling a slip of paper out of a hat) between one 

and eight. This number would determine the condition assigned to the first participant she 

interviewed. From that point on, she would simply move to the next highest interview condition with 

each subsequent interview. This procedure resulted in an evenly distributed number of interviews 

per condition in the T1 data set, as shown below. 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 37

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Table C7. Condition (Assessment Pair) Frequency in Data Set 

Condition Frequency in data set Percent of T1 Interviews

1 163 12.5%

2 161 12.3%

3 165 12.6%

4 165 12.6%

5 161 12.3%

6 159 12.2%

7 161 12.3%

8 170 13.0%

Next, the interview was conducted, in English or Spanish, beginning with demographic 

questions. Interviewers reported that some women cried during the interview. The interviewer 

always stopped and suggested a break. Most of the women wanted to continue even though the 

recollection was clearly upsetting. Many said they appreciated being able to tell someone the 

whole story. 

 

Depending on the interviewer, the participant, and the condition, the baseline interview 

took from 35 minutes to an hour. Interviews that contained the questionnaire based on the DVMOSAIC method took 15 to 25 minutes longer than the others; it was the longest set of questions 

by far, and the questions were more complex and required more thought on the part of the 

participant and the interviewer. Choosing the response option that best matched the initial answer 

could require further exploration or reading the answer back to the participant. Especially in that 

condition, but in others as well, some participants became impatient toward the end of the interview 

and did not want to complete the interview because of concerns about time. In such cases, the 

interviewer tried to set an appointment to complete the interview by phone at another time. In a 

number of cases, we were never able to reach the participant and we had not progressed 

sufficiently in the interview to collect usable data – often we had only the consent form and contact 

information. For this reason, twenty-eight cases from the court were dropped from the sample. 

At the end of in-person interviews, the interviewer thanked the participant and gave her 

referral information to obtain services. Women interviewed in person outside of the court settings 

or by telephone were paid $20 for the baseline interview. Women interviewed in the family court 

were given a round-trip metrocard for subway or bus travel, with a value of $4. 

 

Follow up interviews

Timeline. Follow-up interviews were started in December 2002, and ended in early 

January 2004. The length of follow-up periods varied (and were controlled for in the analysis) for 

several reasons. Intensive baseline data collection continued until May 2003, and the staff could 

not keep up with the T2 interviews as they came due. In many cases, interviewers began trying to 

contact a participant by phone after six months had passed but couldn’t reach her, and they 

continued to try to reach her over the following several months. Retrying numbers that were out of 

service at the initial call was sometimes fruitful as well.

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 38

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Conditions at T2 and maintenance of random assignment. The T2 interview consisted of 

only four conditions, as each participant received the main interview plus only one risk assessment 

instrument or method. In order to keep the second interview as short as possible, non-redundant 

items were also divided among the four conditions, as detailed in the table below. 

Table C8. Follow-up Interview Conditions 

Condition at 

T1 

Risk instrument/method repeated 

at follow-up 

Nonredundant 

items 

1 or 6 DV-MOSAIC L1-L5 

2 or 3 K-SID L6-L9 

4 or 7 DA L10-L14 

5 or 8 DVSI L15-L19 

Participants remained evenly distributed across interview conditions at T2, as shown below. 

Table C9. Maintenance of Random Assignment at T2 

Condition at T1 Condition at T2 # T2 Interviews 

Completed 

Percent of 

completed T2’s 

1 & 6 1 194 25.2% 

2 & 3 2 198 26.7% 

4 & 7 3 187 24.3% 

5 & 8 4 190 24.7% 

Protocol for T2 Interviews. Follow-up interviews were conducted over the phone, except 

on the rare occasions when a participant requested to do the interview in person. Before 

contacting a participant for a follow-up interview, the interviewer checked the contact sheet for any 

instructions about safety (cover story, good times to call, etc.). Interviewers followed a standard 

protocol depending on whether a man, woman, or child answered the phone. Unless an 

interviewer was speaking directly to a participant, she never revealed the name of the study or the 

nature of the research. When someone other than the participant answered the phone and asked 

why the interviewer was calling the participant, the interviewer simply said that she was conducting 

a survey on women’s health and could speak to the participant only. Interviewers did not leave 

messages on answering machines unless they had previously been instructed to do so by the 

participant. Interviewers recorded the outcome of each attempt made and any relevant details of 

the attempt (e.g., best time to call participant, reluctance of the person who answered to provide 

any information, tenor of response) on the contact sheet for future reference. 

Upon reaching a participant, interviewers gave a brief introduction explaining who they 

were and why they were calling and then proceeded to ask the following three questions: (1) “Is 

this a good time to talk for a few minutes?” (2) “Are you able to talk privately at this time?” and (3) 

“Is this a safe time for you to talk, a time when you will not be overheard or interrupted?” (These 

same questions were asked on all initial phone contacts with the LASD sample.) If the participant 

answered “No” to any of these questions, the interviewer told the participant that she would call her 

back another time and asked the participant what time would be best. 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 39

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Before beginning the interview, interviewers informed participants that the interview would 

last approximately 20 to 30 minutes and that they would receive a $30 money order ($50 if 

recruited from the court) after the interview was complete. Interviewers also reminded participants 

that their participation was entirely confidential, that they did not have to answer any questions that 

they did not wish to, and that they were free to end the interview at any time. 

Before beginning the interview, interviewers reviewed both the participant’s and the 

offender’s information on the contact sheet in order to confirm its accuracy and to record any new 

information that the participant could supply. Interviewers were asked to probe for the offender’s 

date of birth and social security number if they were not originally provided, as well as for any 

change of address of the offender and the participant. 

Difficult to reach participants, delays and attrition. The major reason for attrition at T2 was 

our inability to reach the victim. We are not aware of any situations in which participating in the 

study caused serious problems for participants or put them in danger. 

If they determined that the phone contact information for a participant was no longer 

viable, interviewers attempted to reach the alternate contacts by phone. On reaching someone at 

the alternate contact number, the interviewer asked for the alternate contact by name. If the 

named contact answered, the interviewer explained that the participant had given us the contact’s 

name and number so that we could find out how to reach her if her number changed. Some 

alternate contacts readily gave the information, others required more explanation, and some simply 

said they would pass along the message. In a few cases, the participant was there, or called back 

from the contact’s number at a later time. There were a number of cases in which the alternate did 

not know where the participant was, and cases in which the alternate’s phone number was also 

disconnected. (See Table C11 - Reasons for Declining.) 

If neither a participant nor her alternate contacts could be reached by phone after several 

attempts, letters were sent to the participant’s address asking her to call Safe Horizon or JRC to 

schedule a time to do the interview. Occasionally these letters were returned by the post office 

with no forwarding address. Letters were then sent to an alternate contact’s address asking them 

to pass the information along to the participant. In NYC, 209 letters were sent, and 30 women 

(14% of the letter recipients) called into the 800-number in response. (This information was not 

tracked for the LA sample.) 

 

As interviewers systematically moved through all possible avenues of communication, 

proceeding from the most direct and immediate form of contact (calls to participant) to the least 

direct and immediate (letters to alternates’ addresses), often several months would pass until the 

participant was finally reached to complete the interview. 

 

Women living at a shelter at the time of the baseline interview were the most difficult to 

reach for the follow-up interview. When we contacted the shelter, we often found that the 

participant had moved. In these situations, interviewers tried to determine who the caseworker had 

been and to speak to her to see if she had any forwarding information for the participant. We were 

often told that the participant occasionally speaks with the caseworker, and that the caseworker 

would give our phone number to the participant the next time she called. Weeks or months could 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 40

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
pass until we received a phone call from the participant. In other instances, participants’ and/or 

alternates’ phone numbers were temporarily disconnected (sometimes for two or three months or 

more), but we would continue to call to check on the status of the service. We were sometimes 

able to get through to a participant many months later, when her phone service was reinstated. 

Because of interviewers’ persistence and reluctance to make the determination that the final status 

of the participant was “unreachable,” we continued to contact participants through the final weeks 

of the study; hence, some T2 interviews were completed after a year or more had elapsed after a 

baseline interview, and one was completed almost two years after. 

Retention Rates

There were 1307 eligible and usable T1 interviews completed, and of these cases, 782 

completed a T2 interview, for a retention rate of 60%. Retention rates varied by site, as detailed in 

Table C10. 

A very small number of women declined to participate at T2. As can be seen in the table 

below, only a total of 23 women were reached and subsequently declined. Most non-responses at 

T2 were due to invalid contact information, or the inability to get the participant on the phone. Our 

re-contact procedure precluded us from leaving messages on answering machines or with any 

person other than the named alternate. Thus, it was not uncommon for our interviewers to attempt 

to reach a participant 10 to 15 times, each time reaching someone in the home and being told to 

call back later, but never reaching the participant. There were also occasions where we did reach 

the participant, and she set up an interview time for us to call her back, but she was not available 

during the call back time, or any time thereafter. The table below details the major categories of 

attrition in the study, by study site. 

Table C10. Retention Rate at T2 by Site 

Recruitment Site T2 Retention

Rate

NYC Family Courts 61%* 

LASD 69%

NYC Shelters 45% 

LA Shelter 33% 

NYC Hospitals 47% 

NYC SH Community offices 64% 

Total 60%

*Retention rates in Family Courts ranged from 70% in Brooklyn, which also had the highest 

recruitment rate, to 52% in Queens Family Court, which had the lowest recruitment rate of the 

three courts. 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 41

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Table C11. Reasons for Attrition at T2: Frequency and Percent of Baseline Sample 

Reason for attrition Safe Horizon 

(NYC Courts 

Shelters) 

N 

(% of T1) 

T1 N=818 

JRC 

(LASD, LA 

Shelters) 

N 

(% of T1) 

T1 N=459 

JHU 

(NYC 

hospitals) 

N 

(% of T1) 

T1 N=30 

Retention rate 58% 64% 47% 

1. All contact info invalid 194

(24%) 

126 

(26%) 

6 

(20%) 

2. Valid contact info for participant but 

couldn’t reach directly/never started 

interview 

135 

(17%) 

31 

(7%) 

10 

(33%) 

3. Participant reached but declined 17 

(2%) 

6 

(1%) 

0 

Total with baseline but no T2 interview 346 

(42%) 

163 

(36%) 

16 

(53%) 

1. All contact information invalid includes: disconnected phones, wrong numbers, letters returned, 

participant left shelter and left no forwarding information. 

2. Valid contact information but didn’t reach/interview includes: only reached an answering 

machine; ring/no pickup; being told to call back; leaving call-back number with the alternate 

who says she will give it to participant; speaking with participant but never a good time or 

unavailable at scheduled time. 

3. Participant declines. Interviewer spoke to participant, who decided she no longer wanted to 

participate. 

For the small number who declined (23) at Time 2, we do not have records of the reason for 

declining. Anecdotally, the interviewers occasionally passed along the reason given by the 

participant. These included a lack of time, that the relationship was fine, and that the woman had 

moved on in her life and did not want to dwell on the past. 

Criminal Justice Data 

California criminal justice recidivism (arrest for DV) data were obtained from the California 

Office of Criminal Justice Planning, through a search of the CLETS database. The search was 

done using the offender’s name, gender, date of birth, social security number, and driver’s license 

number. We had the date of birth for nearly every offender, the license number for the majority of 

offenders for whom we had incident reports, and a few social security numbers. No criminal history 

record was found for 92 offenders, 20% of the L.A. cases. 

New York criminal justice recidivism (arrest for DV) data were obtained under a contract 

with the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS). The basis of the search is 

the same as in California, except that driver’s license numbers are not used. Offenders who have 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 42

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
ever been arrested are best identified through a “NYSID number” (New York State ID), but we did 

not have NYSID numbers because of our data sources. Out of 856 names submitted to DCJS, 579 

(68%) had a possible match. This rate is surprisingly high, as we recruited most of the victims from 

a civil court, and none was recruited from a criminal justice site. 

Implementation Challenges

Delays

The Spring of 2001 was spent lining up site agreements. The two largest recruitment sites, the 

New York Family Courts and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, required major changes, as 

detailed in those sections. (Recruitment at the hospitals was delayed even further, for other 

reasons, and therefore less affected by the initial delays.) Safe Horizon and JRC hired 

interviewers in New York and Los Angeles, and Johns Hopkins staff submitted the protocol to their 

IRB. 

Several unforeseen tragedies occurred. In the summer of 2001, all research projects at 

Johns Hopkins University and approved by the IRB were halted because of the death of a 

volunteer in a medical experiment. Our application was not processed until the IRB was 

reconstituted with new regulations. The requirements were more stringent, but the main problem 

was that we were delayed into the fall. 

As our application was being reviewed by the new Johns Hopkins IRB in September, 2001, 

the attacks on New York City and the Pentagon occurred. Safe Horizon’s main office, 

sevenblocks from the World Trade Center was closed from September 11 until December 9. There 

was no telephone or e-mail service for three months, and the NYC PI was redeployed fulltime to 

9/11 related duties until December. The Risk Assessment project began in earnest in early 2002. 

Another delay was related to negotiations with Gavin de Becker & Associates and changes 

in the MOSAIC application. The MOSAIC-20, which we had obtained and been trained on in the 

course of the planning study, had been replaced by the DV-MOSAIC, a more complex system that 

was not so readily adaptable to the purpose and design of this study. The MOSAIC-20, as used by 

the LASD, was an interview designed to be administered to the victim as soon as possible after a 

violent incident. The new DV-MOSAIC was not designed as an “instrument” in the usual sense of 

the word. Rather, it is intended to be completed by an investigator after gathering information from 

the victim, offender, and existing records. 

Difficulty implementing DV-MOSAIC in questionnaire format. In DV MOSIAC, there are 

areas of inquiry with graded responses that are guidelines designed to prompt more concrete 

questions and consolidation of information already collected by a criminal justice professional. 

Converting these complex domains of inquiry into direct questions that an interviewer could ask a 

victim, perhaps not a highly educated victim nor one who was familiar with criminal justice 

terminology, was a lengthy process. The investigators tried to remain true to the spirit of DVMOSAIC while at the same time maintaining the independence of the evaluation. In addition, the 

response options did not have a linear relationship to the questions or areas of inquiry. They often 

introduced new dimensions, and the questions would have to be revised to capture those 

dimensions. Then the questionnaire had to be translated into Spanish and back translated into 

English to verify the translation. The first version we sent into the field with the interviewers in 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 43

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
March 2002 did not work; the interviewers reported that it was too cumbersome. We pulled them 

back and reworked it (and translated it into Spanish) and sent the interviewers out again. Much 

training was required on understanding the intent of the questions and how to capture responses. 

Recruitment rate

In both New York and Los Angeles, the pace of recruitment of participants fell below 

expectations. In NYC, there was no one to interview on some court days and paperwork related to 

each interview consumed a large amount of time. Interviewers got both physically (losing their 

voice after four or five interviews) and emotionally exhausted. The time of a floating interviewer 

positioned to bring fresh paperwork to the other interviewers and collect their interviewers was 

taken up traveling hours roundtrip to each borough. 

The NYC interviewers wrote the following report on the difficulties they faced in recruiting 

in the family courts. 

In the New York City Family Courts, many women were happy to participate in the 

study, but a large number declined to participate. Some had been in court so long 

that they just wanted to leave upon receiving their order of protection. While there 

was usually ample time to complete the interview while the protection order was

being processed, many women did not feel up to participating because of 

headaches and fatigue. Some decided to leave the court before receiving their

order. In addition, the family court atmosphere was not always conducive to 

conducting an interview. At times, the woman and the batterer and their children 

were all present. In this set of circumstances, a woman would often decline to 

participate. It may have been dangerous for her to discuss the history of the 

abuse with the abuser in such close proximity. Also, many women did not want

the children to be privy to all of the details of the abuse. Several women, with 

children and without, were concerned about confidentiality. Even though the rules

of confidentiality were clearly articulated, they thought it best not to participate. 

Many women that were eligible simply did not want to talk about it. 

Calculations were similarly disparate from reality in Los Angeles, where there were two full 

time interviewers. With the number of domestic violence 911 calls that the LASD had reported, the 

assumption was that there would be ample potential participants. In reality, however, the 

participating stations did not produce the large volume of cases anticipated, and the contact 

information for victims was particularly bad. Various strategies were attempted to improve the pace 

of recruitment, including re-staffing, that had positive effects. 

Both JRC and Safe Horizon found it easy to supplement the numbers with a shelter 

sample. On the one hand, this is a high-risk population and therefore appropriate for testing the 

validity of risk assessments, but on the other, retention rates are low because the women often 

relocate after leaving shelter. In one visit to a shelter, between four and seven interviews were 

guaranteed. Although the shelters assured us that they had contact information for women when 

they left shelter and that they stayed in touch with the former residents, in reality, they often did not 

have contact information (or accurate contact information) for former residents. 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 44

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Johns Hopkins University staff experienced even greater challenges recruiting from the 

health care system. The NYC hospital emergency departments did not prove to be useful 

recruitment sites because of a combination of factors. Although routine screening for domestic 

violence was the policy in these emergency rooms and would have afforded sufficient numbers of 

abused women from among whom to recruit, these policies were not implemented uniformly across 

shifts and settings. As the literature has shown, unless there is constant attention to periodic 

training on domestic violence and appropriate screening and referrals for health care professionals, 

maintenance of system supports for screening and intervention for abused victims, and trust in the 

on site interventions for domestic violence, screening and identification of abuse victims decreases 

over time even when policies have been introduced. This decline seems to have occurred in these 

emergency departments. There were far fewer domestic violence victims being identified whom 

we could attempt to recruit than had been originally assured. In most of the hospitals, therefore, 

recruitment was done not through the emergency department but through the crime victims 

treatment program located in the social work department of the hospitals. 

In summary, baseline interviews began in March 2002 and concluded in June 2003. 

Contacting the victims and recruiting them into the study proved more difficult and took much 

longer than we had anticipated, and the numbers of cases provided by the hospitals, LASD, and 

Family Courts were lower than anticipated. Follow-up interviews were started in December 2002 

and continued through June 2003. The lag between baseline and follow-up, which averaged nine 

months instead of six months but took as long as a year to attempt, undoubtedly increased the 

attrition rate. 

Staffing and impact on interviewers

Johns Hopkins had no personnel paid by the project on site at the hospitals, and had to 

depend primarily on hospital personnel who were not directly compensated by the research project. 

We tried to remedy this by having a post doctoral fellow spend at least one day a week in the 

hospitals recruiting and interviewing, but this step did not fully solve our problems. We therefore 

recruited few women from these settings and our attrition from those settings was even higher that 

that of our other settings. 

A not unexpected problem experienced by both JRC and Safe Horizon was supervising 

field staff long distance. JRC is located 300 miles north of Los Angeles, and field staff were on 

their own most of the time. It was difficult to ascertain how time was being allocated and the exact 

reason for low productivity. When the operation was moved to Pacific Grove, with a single 

employee handling the logistics in Los Angeles, matters improved. Similarly, in New York City, it 

was not always possible to keep tabs on the interviewers. Most of the seven interviewers who 

worked in the field over the course of the project were highly self-motivated, hard working, and 

responsible, but there were a couple of short-lived hires who did not prove entirely reliable. 

Another factor that we did not adequately plan for was the impact of doing the interviews 

on the interviewers, especially those working with victims in person. There was an emotional toll of 

hearing the stories and seeing the wounds, day after day, month after month. The second Safe 

Horizon project director was a social worker who was able to help the interviewers, and sending 

them to a workshop on vicarious trauma was also a help, they reported. The stress of trying to 

recruit exacerbated the strain. Breaks from interviewing had to be scheduled. There were 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 45

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
substantial individual differences both in how much exposure to victims’ stories an interviewer 

could tolerate, and ability to recruit. Logically, these attributes co-varied. There was also a fine 

line that not all interviewers were able to navigate between effective recruiting and intrusion. 

Nonetheless, the most productive interviewer of the project also inspired attachment and loyalty 

from the participants, who seemed to see her as both a friend and an expert (although she was

neither). 

Another source of conflict for the interviewers in New York City was a need to feel that the 

information they produced would be used to help battered women and would be interpreted 

responsibly. As most of the NYC interviewers were Latina, they were especially concerned with

how data on their community would be used. As one said, they used membership in that 

community to give the non-Latina PI’s access and they wanted to be sure that the data would not 

be construed in a way that could be hurtful. In the LA cases, the Spanish-speaking interviewer 

noted that these interviews tended to be longer than those conducted in English, and she felt that 

often the interviews were the first time the women had spoken of the violence to others. This 

interpretation was corroborated by respondents’ frequent inability or reluctance to provide 

alternative contact information, typically saying there was “no one” we could call who would always 

know where the participant was if we couldn’t reach her for the follow-up interview. 

Summary

As a consequence of these challenges, both recruitment and retention proved to be much 

more demanding, took more staff and supervisor time, and had lower success rates than we had 

anticipated. Generalizing from studies conducted in geographically smaller, less populous, and 

less complex municipalities may prove misleading when estimating recruitment and retention rates 

in major metropolitan areas. We were fortunate that NIJ granted us an extension and that we were 

finally able to recruit the 1307 participants needed for adequate statistical power. 

D. RESULTS 

Sample Retention and Characteristics

Of the 1307 study participants enrolled at baseline, we were able to obtain follow-up interviews with 

782 (60%) at time 2. Dissimilarity between respondents and non-respondents to the follow-up 

survey heightens the probability of selection bias in findings. In this study, the participants lost to 

follow-up were demographically similar to those retained in the study with some exceptions (Table 

D1a). Unemployed women were most likely to be lost at follow-up. Hispanic women and 

homemakers were slightly but significantly more likely to be retained in the study. 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 46

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Table D1a. Demographic characteristics at T1 (Baseline) of respondents and nonrespondents to T2 interviews. 

All T1

Respondents 

 

(N=1307)

n (%) 

T1/T2 

Respondents 

 

(N=782) 

n (%) 

T2 Nonrespondents

(T1 only)

 (N=525) 

n (%) 

Racial / Ethnic group **

 African descent /Black 363 (28%) 209 (27%) 154 (29%) 

 Latina /Hispanic 694 (53%) 444 (57%) 250 (48%) 

 European descent /White 130 (10%) 72 ( 9%) 58 (11%) 

 Other racial /ethnic groups 117 ( 9%) 55 ( 7%) 62 (12%) 

Foreign born 497 (38%) 295 (38%) 202 (39%) 

Education

 Less than high school 445 (34%) 262 (34%) 183 (35%) 

 High school diploma /GED 412 (32%) 260 (33%) 152 (29%) 

 Some college or vocational school 334 (26%) 186 (24%) 148 (28%) 

 BA/BS or college degree 115 ( 9%) 74 ( 10%) 41 ( 8%) 

Employment status **

 Working full or part time 573 (44%) 367 (47%) 206 (39%) 

 Other 734 (56%) 415 (53%) 319 (61%) 

Employment situation (check all that 

apply) 

 Employed full time 394 (30%) 251 (32%) 143 (27%) 

 Employed part time 180 (14%) 117 (15%) 63 (12%) 

 Homemaker ** 227 (17%) 155 (20%) 72 (14%) 

 Looking for work 165 (13%) 98 (13%) 67 (13%) 

 Unemployed *** 479 (37%) 252 (32%) 227 (43%) 

 Student 141 (11%) 83 (11%) 58 (11%) 

Abuser’s relationship to respondent 

 Spouse /common law spouse 368 (28%) 230 (29%) 138 (27%) 

 Ex-husband /ex-common law husband 90 ( 7%) 47 ( 6%) 43 ( 8%) 

 Estranged husband 189 (15%) 117 (15%) 72 (14%) 

 Boyfriend 108 ( 8%) 77 ( 9%) 31 ( 6%) 

 Ex-boyfriend 541 (42%) 311 (40%) 230 (45%) 

Involvement /Cohabitation at baseline 

 Cohabitating 268 (20%) 180 (23%) 88 (17%) 

 Still involved but not cohabitating 49 ( 4%) 32 ( 4%) 17 ( 3%) 

 On again, off again 46 ( 4%) 29 ( 4%) 17 ( 3%) 

 Not involved or cohabitating 403 (72%) 541 (69%) 403 (77%) 

** p < .01, *** p < .001 

Note: Some categories add to more than 100% due to rounding. For each analysis the actual Ns 

may vary slightly from those listed at the top of the column, due to missing data.

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 47

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
As can be seen in Table D1b. below, the sample was severely abused at baseline, with 43% 

having experienced at least one CTS2 “severe” act three or more times in the past six months. 

Also, 45% had experienced a threat or assault with a weapon, choking or attempted murder within 

the previous 6 months. 

Table D1b. Severity of Abuse Assessed at Baseline (T1) 

Summary Severe Acts Reported All T1 respondents 

 N (%)

Experienced all of the following acts by this partner, at least once, 

ever: punched or hit with something that could hurt, choked, 

slammed up against wall, beat up, kicked 

 311 (23.7) 

Experienced all of the following acts by this partner, at least once 

in the last 6 months: punched or hit with something that could hurt,

choked, slammed up against wall, beat up, kicked 

 194 (14.8) 

Experienced at least one CTS2 “severe” act 3 or more times in 

past 6 months (includes any of above acts or: using force to make 

have sex, using knife or gun, burned or scalded on purpose), 

 569 (43.4) 

Partner used a knife or gun on her, choked her, or “tried to kill” her 

in past 6 months 

 589 (44.9) 

In terms of severity of abuse, baseline participants lost to follow-up had similar mean scores on the 

risk assessment scales to those of participants providing interview data at time 2 (Table D2). 

However, those who could not be recontacted scored significantly higher at baseline on frequency 

of severe abuse on the CTS2, and were significantly more likely to rate themselves as at risk for 

reassault and serious harm during the next year. 

Table D2. Mean T1 (baseline) risk assessment scores, victim’s perceived risk, and severity 

of abuse (CTS2) for T2 respondents and non-respondents 

T1 Risk Assessment 

Instrument/Method 

Possible Range 

(Actual range 

for all T1 

Respondents) 

T2 Respondents 

(Total N=782) 

(N per instrument/ 

method) 

Mean 

T2 Non-Respondents 

(Total N=525) 

(N per instrument/ 

method) 

Mean 

DA point score -3 to 37 

(-1 to 36) 

(N=400) 

15.02 

(N=266) 

15.91 

DV-MOSAIC rating 1 to 10 

(3 to 9) 

(N=382) 

6.85 

(N=259) 

6.97 

DVSI point score 0 to 40 

(0 to 28) 

(N=391) 

8.60 

(N=260) 

8.65 

KSID risk score 0 to 3 

(0 to 3) 

(N=391) 

1.09 

(N=267) 

1.12 

Victim rating of likelihood 

partner will physically abuse 

her in the next year 

0 to 10 

(0 to 10) 

(N=775) 

5.01 

(N=517) 

5.36* 

Victim rating of likelihood 

partner will seriously hurt her 

in the next year 

0 to 10 

(0 to 10) 

(N=771) 

4.63 

(N=510) 

5.05* 

CTS2 severe physical 

abuse, frequency weighted

0 to 42 

(0 to 42) 

(N=782) 

6.82 

(N=525) 

8.41** 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 48

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Reliability

Although each risk assessment instrument being evaluated did not necessarily seek to 

measure a unidimensional construct, and internal consistency is less relevant for risk assessment 

than for traditional instruments, we calculated Cronbach’s alpha statistics for the DA, DVSI, and 

KSID in Table D3. The DA had the highest alpha (.66), followed by the DVSI ("=.61). The KSID 

displayed little internal consistency ("=.04). For the DA, internal consistency was relatively 

consistent across demographic subgroups. The DVSI had higher reliability among non-Hispanic

Whites ("=.71) as compared with Hispanics ("=.57). The KSID demonstrated the lowest reliability 

among Black respondents ("= -.25) and among respondents for whom the interview was 

conducted in Spanish ("= -.12). It should be noted, however, that the instruments vary in length, 

and that number of items will affect reliabilities, in that there is likely to be more redundancy and 

therefore higher alphas for longer instruments. In the table below, the DA is the longest with 20 

items; the DVSI has 12 and the K-SID has 10 items. Again, this measure of reliability is not 

particularly meaningful with risk assessment, which aims to capture multiple dimensions with the 

fewest questions possible. 

Table D3. Reliability statistics for the DVSI, KSID, and Danger Assessment by selected 

respondent characteristics. 

DVSI KSID Danger Assessment 

alpha 

(N) 

Alpha 

(N) 

alpha 

(N) 

All respondents .61 

(388) 

.04 

(381) 

.66 

(394) 

African Amer. .60 

(102) 

-.25 

(104) 

.61 

(105) 

Latina/Hispanic .57 

(221) 

.11 

(215) 

.66 

(221) 

Non-Hispanic

Whites

.71 

(34)

.15 

(38)

.65 

(40)

Foreign born .59 

(148) 

-.10 

(143) 

.61 

(155) 

Spanish 

interview 

.54 

(68)

-.12 

(64)

.61 

(76)

*Adjusted for distribution in sample 

Internal consistency calculations are not presented for DV-MOSAIC, because, the items asked of 

women were derived from the “domains of inquiry” of that assessment method by the investigators. 

The term “reliability” is used in a different sense when applied to the DV-MOSAIC. The authors of 

DV-MOSAIC consider a DV-MOSAIC risk score (0-10) to be “unreliable” if the DV-MOSAIC IQ 

score (0-200) is less than 125. In other words, the score becomes less meaningful if there is 

insufficient information about the case. Within the study sample that received DV-MOSAIC 

(n=641), 2.7% (n=17) had IQ scores of less than 125 (Table D4). Low DV-MOSAIC IQ scores were 

more common among those who were administered the interview in Spanish than among those 

administered the interview in English. 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 49

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Table D4. DV-MOSAIC IQ scores by selected respondent characteristics 

Respondent Characteristic Mean 

(SD) 

% < 125 (n) 

All respondents (n=641) 162.3 

(16.6)

2.7 (17) 

African American (n=174) 166.0* 

(13.9)

.6 (1) 

Latina/Hispanic (n=350) 160.3 

(17.6)

4.0 (14) 

Non-Hispanic White (n=60) 161.3 

(17.0)

1.7 (1) 

Mixed/Other (n=54) 163.7 

(15.6)

1.9 (1) 

Foreign born (n=136) 161.2

(17.1)

2.9 (7) 

U.S. born (n=240) 162.9 

(16.3)

2.5 (10) 

Spanish interview (n=56) 157.9 ** 

(17.5)

5.9 (6) 

English interview (n=319) 163.1 

(16.3)

2.0 (11) 

* p < .05, ** p < .01, two-tailed test of independence 

Concurrent Validity 

Concurrent validity assesses the degree to which an instrument measures the construct or 

outcome of interest (e.g., IPV) based on correlation with instruments known to measure similar

constructs, when data for both the instrument and the similar construct are gathered at the same 

point in time. The concurrent validity of the risk assessment instruments and DV-MOSAIC was 

evaluated based on the correlation between each instrument or method’s risk score and baseline 

levels of (ex)partner abuse on the CTS2, and the correlation with victims’ perceptions of the 

likelihood that their partner would harm them in the future. Each of the instruments/method was 

correlated with the frequency and severity of physical abuse, and all but K-SID were correlated with 

the frequency and severity of sexual abuse (Table D5). The extent of both physical and sexual 

abuse were most strongly correlated with DA scores (which contains two items similar to the CTS2, 

thereby inflating the correlation) and least strongly correlated with the K-SID. This same pattern 

held with the instruments’/method’s correlations with victims’ beliefs about the likelihood that their 

(ex)partner would seriously hurt them within the next year (Table D6). However, DV-MOSAIC had 

the strongest correlation between baseline risk assessment scores and respondents’ perception of 

their (ex)partner’s likelihood of being physically abusive (r=.450). K-SID scores were unrelated to 

victim’s beliefs about their risk of future of assault by their (ex)partners. 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 50

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Table D5. Correlations between T1 (baseline) risk assessment scores and measures of 

severe physical and sexual abuse at T1 as measured by the Revised Conflict Tactics Scale 

(CTS2) frequency weighted scores 

CTS2 Severe physical 

abuse, frequency

weighted 

CTS2 Severe sexual 

abuse, frequency

weighted a

DA point score .448 ** .295 **

DV-MOSAIC rating .346 ** .251 **

DVSI point score .293 ** .189 **

K-SID risk scoreb .140** .101**

Victim rating of likelihood partner will be 

physically abusive in the next year 

.215** .186**

Victim rating of likelihood partner will 

seriously hurt her in the next year 

.269** .215**

 * p < .05, ** p < .01, two-tailed test of independence a

 While the physical abuse item is a composite variable, the sexual abuse item is based on a 

single severe sexual abuse item in the CTS2 used in this study (sex without her consent using 

force). Frequency is factored into this variable. 

b The risk score was used for both the continuous & categorical variable analyses for the KSID 

Another way to estimate concurrent validity was the correlation of the instruments/method 

with the victims’ perceptions of risk. The frequency distributions of the two items assessing victim 

perception, both asked on a scale of 1-10, are presented in Tables D6 and D7 below. As can be 

seen, approximately one quarter of the victims thought there was no chance that their partner 

would be physically abusive (23.7%) or seriously harm them (27.8%) in the next year. Close to the 

same percentage were certain that such would happen (23.2% and 22.3%) with the median at 5 for 

both and the mean 5.15 for physical abuse and 4.8 for serious harm. 

Table D6. Responses to the item “How likely is it that your partner will be physically abusive 

with you in the next year?” 

 Likelihood it will happen Rating Frequency* Percent 

No chance 0 306 23.7 

1-4 211 16.3

5 177 13.7

6-9 297 23

I’m sure it will happen 10 301 23.3 

Total 1292 100.0

* 15 women who responded “don’t know” are not included in table

Table D7. Responses to the item “How likely is it that your partner will seriously hurt you in 

the next year?” 

 Likelihood it will happen Rating Frequency* Percent 

No chance 0 356 27.8 

1-4 225 17.6

5 160 12.5

6-9 254 19.8

I’m sure it will happen 10 286 22.3 

Total 1281 100.0

* 26 women who responded “don’t know” are not included in table

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 51

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Table D8. Correlations between T1 (baseline) risk assessment scores and victims’ perceived 

risk of abuse at beginning of interview 

How likely partner will be 

physically abusive in next 

year 

How likely partner will 

seriously hurt you in next 

year 

DA point score .247 ** .344 ** 

DV-MOSAIC rating .450 ** .465 ** 

DVSI point score .248 ** .297 ** 

KSID risk score .175** .143** 

• p < .05, ** p < .01, two-tailed test of independence 

DV-MOSAIC had the strongest correlation with victims’ perception of risk (.45 -.465) while the 

DA and the DVSI had the next highest correlations and the K-SID the lowest. The DA correlation 

was notably stronger (.344) for serious harm than for physical abuse (.247). 

Abuse Occurring Between Baseline and Follow-up Interviews

Among the 782 study participants for whom we had both baseline and follow-up interview 

data, 243 (31.1%) reported experiencing some level of physical or sexual abuse by their (ex) 

partners during the follow-up period. 

Table D9. Types and number of incidents of abuse experienced during the follow-up period 

(minor & severe abuse divided by bold line). 

Type of abuse perpetrated by 

(ex-) partner

Any 

occurrence 

N (%) 

1 time 

N (%) 

2 times 

N (%) 

3-5 times 

N (%) 

6+ times 

N (%) 

Threw something at her 95 (17.5) 24 (4.4) 20 (3.7) 31 (5.7) 20 (2.5) 

Twisted her arm/hair 103 (19.0) 30 (5.5) 20 (3.7) 38 (7.0) 15 (2.8) 

Slapped her 62 (11.6) 23 (4.3) 12 (2.3) 14 (2.6) 13 (2.4) 

Grabbed her 134 (25.2) 43 (8.1) 22 (4.2) 37 (6.9) 32 (6.0) 

Pushed/shoved her 152 (28.3) 44 (8.2) 27 (5.0) 44 (8.2) 37 (6.9) 

Slammed her up against a wall 81 (15.2) 38 (7.1) 16 (3.0) 19 (3.6) 8 (1.5) 

Insisted on sex (no force) 105 (19.7) 18 (3.4) 27 (5.1) 38 (7.1) 22 (4.1) 

Punched her/hit her with 

something that could hurt 

 73 (13.7) 28 (5.3) 18 (3.4) 14 (2.6) 13 (2.4) 

Kicked her 52 (9.8) 13 (2.5) 19 (3.6) 12 (2.3) 8 (1.5) 

Burned or scalded her 6 (1.1) 3 (0.6) 1 (0.2) 2 (0.4) 0 (0.0) 

Beat her up 69 (13.0) 30 (5.7) 15 (2.8) 14 (2.6) 10 (1.9) 

“Choked” (strangled) her 71 (13.3) 44 (8.3) 10 (1.9) 10 (1.9) 7 (1.3) 

Used gun or knife on her 25 (4.7) 11 (2.1) 7 (1.3) 6 (1.1) 1 (0.2) 

Used force to make her have 

sex 

 43 (8.1) 14 (2.6) 10 (1.9) 12 (2.3) 7 (1.3) 

Tried to kill her 1 46 (8.8) -- -- -- -- 1 Frequency not measured. 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 52

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Although most women avoided physical or sexual abuse during the follow-up period, some 

experienced frequent and severe forms of abuse (Table D9). For example, 69 women (13.0%) 

reported being beaten up by their (ex)partner, 39 of whom reported multiple beatings. Forty-six 

women (8.8%) reported that their (ex)partners tried to kill them during the follow-up period; 71 

(13.3%) reported being “choked” or strangled; and 25 (4.7%) had a gun or knife used against them. 

One woman from California died but we were not able to ascertain the reason for her death, and 

one perpetrator from NY was killed by police in the course of a violent incident not involving the 

victim. 

In the original proposal, the research team collapsed the categories of abuse into 8 levels of 

ascending severity as shown in (Table D10) roughly paralleling the categories of severity 

suggested for use with the CTS2. The most common category of physical abuse was for acts that 

were severe enough to be potentially lethal, those in the Physical Abuse: Very High category 

(n=88, 11.3%) followed by minor forms of physical abuse (n=80, 10.2%). Harassment and 

psychological abuse without any physical abuse was as common as was physical abuse (n=240, 

30.7%). Only 16.0% were free of any form of abuse including verbal abuse. 

Table D10. Form of abuse experienced during follow-up period. 

Form of abuse1 Items in Category N (782) % 

None 125 16.0

Verbal Call names 48 6.1 

Psychological / 

harassment 

Controlling behavior 240 30.7 

Stalking / threats Stalking/threats to harm 126 16.1 

Physical Abuse: Low Twist arm/hair, grab, push/shove, etc. 

Caused sprain, bruise, small cut. 

80 10.2

Physical Abuse: 

Medium 

Punch, kick, etc. Caused physical pain that 

still hurt the next day. 

26 3.3

Physical Abuse: High Choke, Burn, Beat up, etc. Serious Injury

(Blacked out from being hit on the head, 

broken bone, etc.). 

49 6.3

Physical Abuse: Very 

high 

Use gun/ knife, try to kill, etc. Life 

threatening injury (Lost consciousness due 

to choking, etc.). 

88 11.3

1

 Categories are mutually exclusive – only highest level of abuse experienced is reported

Bivariate Associations Between Baseline Risk Assessment Scores and Abuse During 

Follow-up Period 

The following analyses examine how strongly baseline measures of risk are associated 

with subsequent abuse experienced during the follow-up period. We examined bivariate 

associations between each of the risk assessment scores and subsequent abuse in several ways. 

First, we calculated Pearson correlation coefficient for the association between the baseline risk 

assessment scores and our 8-level severity of abuse measure (Table D11). The DA had the 

highest correlation coefficient with subsequent abuse (r=.382), followed by DV-MOSAIC (r=.217), 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 53

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
DVSI (r=.199), and the K-SID Risk Score (r=.131). The correlations increased slightly for the DA, 

the DV-MOSAIC, and the DVSI when cases with no potential victim-partner contact during followup were excluded from the analysis. These were cases in which the victim was in shelter or had 

moved away and the partner did not know where she was, or the abuser was incarcerated or had 

moved far enough away that the victim felt there was no chance of contact. 

Table D11. Correlations between T1 (baseline) risk assessment scores and severity of 

abuse during follow-up excluding cases with no potential exposure to abuser. 2

Pearson correlation coefficient 

DA point score .382**

DV-MOSAIC rating .217**

DVSI point score .199**

K-SID risk score .131** 

We also examined the correlation between the frequency and severity of physical and 

sexual abuse during the follow-up period. Only the DA (r=.246), and the DVSI (r=.174) were 

significantly associated with the frequency and severity of physical abuse during follow-up (Table 

D12). Only the DA (r=.141) and the DV-MOSAIC (r=.132) had statistically significant association 

between the frequency and severity of sexual abuse during the follow-up and baseline risk 

assessment (Table D12). 

Table D12. Correlations between baseline risk assessment scores and CTS frequency 

weighted severe abuse scores. 

Severe physical abuse, 

frequency weighted 

severe sexual abuse, 

frequency weighted 

DA point score .246** .141**

DV-MOSAIC rating .069 .132* 

DVSI point score .174** .084 

K-SID risk score .020 .111 

Each of the three risk assessment instruments being evaluated has specific cut-points for 

distinguishing victims at different levels of risk. The DV-MOSAIC, however, is meant to be used 

only as a 10 point rating scale. This continuous scale was used in all of the correlational analyses. 

Gavin de Becker argues for the increased precision of the ten point rating scale and points out 

compellingly, that cut points or ranges ignore the difference between a case at the lowest end of a 

range and the highest end of a range. However, for calculating the rest of the analyses (including 

sensitivity, specificity and positive predictive power), cut points are needed. We therefore based a 

cut point on de Becker’s suggestions (1,2; 3,4; 5,6,7; 8,9,10) as well as our data. As de Becker 

predicted, we found that none of this previously abused sample scored in the 1-2 range of DVMOSAIC. Using these cut-points (in the case of DV-MOSAIC artificially imposed), Tables D13a13e display the categories or ratings of predicted risk in terms of the eight hierarchical categories of 

abuse in our abuse outcome measure (Table D10). 

 2

 27 cases in which the victim indicated that either she was in shelter or some other location unknown to the abusive 

partner, or the partner was in jail or deported during the entire follow-up period. 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 54

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Danger Assessment. The four categories of danger based on the DA are highly and 

significantly associated with the level or type of abuse during the follow-up (Table D13a). Among 

victims scoring in the “extreme danger” category at baseline, only 5.9% experienced either no 

abuse or only verbal abuse whereas about half of victims in the “variable danger” category 

experienced no abuse or only verbal abuse by their (ex)partner. One in five women in the extreme 

danger category experienced very high (and potentially lethal) abuse during the follow-up period, 

compared with one case (1.5%) in the “variable danger” category and 5.1% in the “increased 

danger” category. Among the 50 women who had been administered the DA and subsequently 

experienced potentially lethal abuse, 44 (88.0%) had scores in either the severe danger or extreme 

danger categories. The likelihood of being stalked or threatened yet avoiding physical assault 

increased from 5.9% in the “variable danger” category to “19.6% in the “extreme danger” category, 

but the increased (15.2%) and severe (12.5%) categories were not in order. 

Table D13a. Level of abuse at T2 by risk category based on the Danger Assessment. 

Abuse during 

follow-up 

Variable Danger 

(DA score 1-7) 

N=68 (17.0%)

Increased 

Danger 

(DA score 8-13) 

N=99 (24.7%)

Severe Danger 

(DA score14-

17) 

N=80 (20.0%)

Extreme Danger

(DA score 18-

40) 

N=153 (38.3%)

n (%) N (%) N (%) n (%)

None

 26 (38.2) 21 (21.2) 9 (11.3) 8 ( 5.2) 

Verbal 

 12 (17.6) 3 (3.0) 7 ( 8.8) 1 ( 0.7) 

Psychological / 

harassment 15 (22.1) 32 (32.3) 24 (30.0) 51 (33.3) 

Stalking / threats 

 4 ( 5.9) 15 (15.2) 10 (12.5) 30 (19.6) 

Physical Abuse: 

Low 8 (11.8) 10 (10.1) 8 (10.0) 13 ( 8.5) 

Physical Abuse: 

Medium 0 ( 0 ) 6 (6.1) 0 ( 0.0) 6 ( 3.9) 

Physical Abuse: 

High 2 ( 2.9) 7 ( 7.1) 10 (12.5) 12 ( 7.8) 

Physical Abuse: 

Very high 1 ( 1.5) 5 ( 5.1) 12 (15.0) 32 (20.9) 

χ

2

 = 102.571, p<.001; Kendall’s J-b = .289, p<.001 

DV-MOSAIC. Scores on DV-MOSAIC were also significantly associated with level of 

abuse at follow-up. Subjects that scored in the highest rating (8 -10) category on DV-MOSAIC 

were twice as likely as those who had scores of below 8 to experience potentially lethal abuse 

during the follow-up period (14.9% vs. 7.3%) or stalking and threats (26.1% vs. 12.9%). Those 

with the highest ratings on DV-MOSAIC were only half as likely to experience no abuse or only

verbal abuse (13.5% vs. 27.5%). Among the 38 women who were administered the DV-MOSAIC 

and subsequently experienced very high (and potentially lethal) violence, 20 (52.6%) had scores at 

the highest ratings. 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 55

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Table D13b. Level of abuse at follow-up by baseline DV-MOSAIC ratings 

Abuse during follow-up 

MOSAIC Rating 

3 - 4 

N=23 (6.0%) 

MOSAIC Rating 

5 - 7 

N=225 (58.9%) 

MOSAIC Rating 

8 - 10 

N=134 (35.1%) 

n (%) n (%) n (%)

None 12 (52.2) 37 (16.4) 12 ( 9.0) 

Verbal 

 1 ( 4.3) 18 ( 8.0) 6 ( 4.5) 

Psychological / 

harassment 5 (21.7) 72 (32.0) 41 (30.6) 

Stalking / threats 

 1 ( 4.3) 31 (13.8) 35 (26.1) 

Physical Abuse: Low 

 3 (13.0) 29 (12.9) 9 ( 6.7) 

Physical Abuse: 

Medium 0 ( 0.0) 10 ( 4.4) 4 ( 3.0) 

Physical Abuse: High 

 1 ( 4.3) 10 ( 4.4) 7 ( 5.2) 

Physical Abuse: Very 

high 0 ( 0.0) 18 ( 8.0) 20 (14.9) 

χ

2

 = 46.34, p<.000 

 

DVSI. The general pattern seen between DV-MOSAIC baseline ratings and subsequent 

severity of abuse was also observed for the DVSI (Table D13d). 

Table D13c. Level of abuse at follow-up by baseline DVSI risk category. 

Abuse during follow-up Not High Risk 

(DVSI score 1-8) 

N=179 (45.8%) 

High Risk 

(DVSI score=9-28) 

N=212 (54.2%) 

n (%) n (%)

None 37 (20.7) 18 ( 8.5) 

Verbal 17 ( 9.5) 9 ( 4.2) 

Psychological / harassment 54 (30.2) 68 (32.1) 

Stalking / threats 12 ( 6.7) 50 (23.6) 

Physical Abuse: Low 26 (14.5) 17 ( 8.0) 

Physical Abuse: Medium 9 ( 5.0) 5 ( 2.4) 

Physical Abuse: High 11 ( 6.1) 17 ( 8.0) 

Physical Abuse: Very high 13 ( 7.3) 28 (13.2) 

χ2 = 41.23, df=7, p<.001 

A higher proportion of those in the high risk DVSI category were more likely than those not in the 

high-risk category to suffer potentially lethal forms of partner violence during the follow-up (13.2% 

vs. 7.3%), while more subjects in the not-high-risk category were more likely to escape 

harassment, psychological abuse, and physical abuse (30.2% vs. 12.7%). Among the 41 women 

who were administered the DVSI and subsequently experienced potentially lethal abuse 28 

(68.3%) were in the DVSI high-risk category. 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 56

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
K-SID. There was no statistically significant association between the KSID risk levels measured at 

baseline and subsequent partner abuse (Table D13e). 

Table D13d. Level of abuse at follow-up by baseline KSID risk category. 

Abuse during 

follow-up 

Low Risk 

(KSID score 0)

N=153 (39.1%)

Moderate Risk 

(KSID score 1) 

N=136 (34.8%)

High Risk 

(KSID score 2) 

N=12 (3.1%)

Very High Risk 

(KSID partner 

violated past 

TRO)

N=90 (23.0%)

n (%) n (%) n (%) N (%)

None

 36 (23.5) 26 (19.1) 

 

 2 (16.7) 6 ( 6.7) 

Verbal 

 11 (7.2) 6 ( 4.4) 1 ( 8.3) 4 ( 4.4) 

Psychological / 

harassment 45 (29.4) 44 (32.4) 2 (16.7) 27 (30.0) 

Stalking / threats 21 (13.7) 20 (14.7) 2 (16.7) 21 (23.3) 

Physical Abuse: 

Low 12 (7.8) 10 ( 7.4) 3 (25.0) 12 (13.3) 

Physical Abuse: 

Medium 4 ( 2.6) 4 ( 2.9) 0 ( 0 ) 4 ( 4.4) 

Physical Abuse: 

High 7 ( 4.6) 11 ( 8.1) 0 ( 0 ) 3 ( 3.3) 

Physical Abuse: 

Very high 17 (11.1) 15 (11.0) 2 (16.7) 13 (14.4) 

χ

2

 = 25.94, df=21, p=.209; Kendall’s J-b = .128, approximate p=.001

We also examined differences in the mean risk assessment scores (or risk category for the 

K-SID) for each of the risk assessment methods across the eight categories of abuse (Table 

D13e). Except for the KSID, there were statistically significant differences in the mean risk scores 

across the eight categories of abuse for each of the risk assessment methods. In general, women 

in the stalking/threats (but no physical or sexual abuse) and the very high abuse categories had the 

highest risk scores. The lowest risk scores were for women in the no abuse, verbal abuse only, and 

the minor physical or sexual abuse categories. The relative difference between the two categories 

with no physical abuse and the highest level of abuse severity was greatest for the Danger 

Assessment which produced a broader range of scores compared to the other instruments/method. 

In other words, the abuse categories varied most dramatically across the DA risk categories. 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 57

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Table D13e. Mean risk assessment scores by Level of Abuse at Follow-up 

Abuse during Follow-up DA 

Mean (SD) 

N 

DV-MOSAIC 

Mean (SD) 

n 

DVSI 

Mean (SD) 

n 

KSID 

Mean (SD) 

N 

 None 9.61 (6.66) 6.07 (1.46) 6.07 (4.36) .69 (.89) 

 64 61 55 70 

Verbal only 9.13 (6.59) 6.48 (1.23) 7.15 (4.17) .91 (1.15) 

 23 25 26 22 

Psychol/harassment 15.49 (6.99) 6.98 (1.16) 8.97 (4.81) 1.09 (1.15) 

 122 118 122 118 

Threats/stalking 17.33 (6.62) 7.42 (.84) 11.05 (4.42) 1.36 (1.25) 

 59 67 62 64 

Phys Abuse: low 14.33 (7.82) 6.54 (1.23) 7.12 (4.19) 1.41 (1.26) 

 39 41 43 37 

Phys Abuse: medium 18.08 (7.68) 6.64 (1.15) 6.21 (4.84) 1.33 (1.30) 

 12 14 14 12 

Phys Abuse: high 15.84 (5.39) 6.94 (1.26) 8.75 (3.84) .95 (.97) 

 31 18 28 21 

Phys Abuse: very high 20.08 (6.32) 7.29 (.984) 10.41 (5.49) 1.23 (1.22) 

 50 38 41 47 

Overall mean 15.02 (7.50) 6.85 (1.239) 8.60 (4.86) 1.10 (1.16) 

 Total N 400 382 391 391 

Sensitivity, Specificity, and Positive Predictive Value 

In order to assess the sensitivity, specificity and positive predictive power of the risk 

assessment instruments and method, we arrayed the data by instrument/method-specific risk 

categories and examined 1) whether the study participant experienced any physical or sexual 

abuse during the follow-up; and 2) whether the participant experienced a severe or potentially 

lethal assault (Table D14). Looking at the prediction of any assault during the follow-up, the only 

statistically significant associations with instrument/method-defined risk categories were for the DA 

risk categories. Victims’ baseline-level rating of likelihood of reassault was also significantly 

associated with actual reassault experience. To make the DA categories more comparable to the 

high/low risk categorization based on victims’ perceived risk, we compared the percentage 

reassaulted in the two lower risk groups (variable and increased danger, 23.6%) with the 

percentage reassaulted in the two high risk groups (high and extreme danger, 41.7%). The risk 

ratio of 1.8 that one obtains from this comparison of DA low and high-risk groups is similar to the 

risk ratio of 1.7 based on victim’s high- vs. low rating of risk. 

The DA and the DVSI risk categories were both significantly associated with severe or 

potentially lethal abuse during the follow-up period. The likelihood of experiencing a severe assault 

during the follow-up period increased from 3% (2 of 67) in the variable danger category of the DA 

to 30% in the extreme danger category. The most abrupt change, from 3% experiencing severe 

abuse to 16% experiencing severe abuse occurred between the variable (lowest category or score 

of –1 to +7) and increased danger (second lowest category, score of 8-13 out of possible 40) 

categories. Women in the high risk group on the DVSI were nearly twice as likely as those in the 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 58

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
low risk group to experience a severe assault by their (ex)partner during the follow-up period, 26% 

vs. 14%. The high-risk versus low-risk comparison based on victims’ rating of the likelihood that 

their partner would seriously hurt them (25% vs. 13%) was similar to that observed for the DVSI. 

The association between the DV-MOSAIC high-risk categorization and the likelihood of severe 

assault during follow-up approached statistical significance (p=.06). 

Table D14. Instrument/method-defined risk categories measured at baseline by physical or 

sexual assault victimization during follow up 

Risk category determined at 

baseline by instrument/method 

 

N 

Any assault 

 n (%) 

Severe Assault 

 n (%) 

Danger Assessment

 Variable danger (-1 to 7) 

 Increased danger (8-13) 

 Severe danger (14-17) 

 Extreme danger (18-38) 

 Total 

 67 

 98 

 79 

144 

388 

11 (16.4) 

 28 (28.6) 

 30 (38.0) 

 63 (43.8) 

p < .001 

 2 ( 3.0) 

 16 (16.3) 

19 (24.1) 

47 (29.9) 

p < .001 

DV-MOSAIC

 Rating scores 3-4 

 Rating scores 5-7 

 Rating scores 8-10 

 Total 

23 

219 

126 

368 

 

 4 (17.4) 

67 (30.6) 

40 (31.7) 

p=.317 

 1 ( 4.3) 

31 (14.2) 

27 (21.4) 

p=.060 

Domestic Violence Screening 

Instrument

 Not high risk 0-8 

 High risk 9-28 

 Total 

179 

194 

373 

59 (30.5) 

67 (33.5) 

p=.748 

25 (13.8) 

50 (25.3) 

p=.004 

K-SID

 Low risk 0 

 Moderate risk 1 

 High risk 2 

 Very high risk 3 

 Total 

151 

131 

11 

 90 

383 

40 (26.5) 

40 (30.5) 

5 (45.5) 

32 (35.5) 

p=.336 

21 (13.9) 

25 (19.1) 

2 (18.2) 

16 (17.8) 

p=.688 

Victim’s Perception of Risk

 Low risk (1-4) 

 Medium risk (5) 

 High risk (6-10) 

any sev.

313 355 

 93 87 

343 303 

 73 (23.3) 

 34 (36.6) 

 134 (39.1) 

p<.001 

 45 (12.7) 

 18 (20.7) 

 75 (24.8) 

p<.001 

 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 59

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
The sensitivity, specificity, and positive predictive value based on the instrument/methoddefined risk categories are presented in Table D15. The three categories of predicted increased 

risk for the DA provide a wide range of values for sensitivity and specificity. The sensitivity for the 

“increased danger” category is .917 for the DA. While the increased danger category for the DA 

provides the highest sensitivity of any of the instrument/method-defined risk groups, it also has the 

lowest specificity. The “severe danger” category of the DA provides the maximum value for 

combined sensitivity and specificity of any of the instruments’ categories of increased risk [.704 

(sensitivity) + .492 (specificity) = 1.196]. The “very high risk” category for the K-SID provided the 

highest specificity. Positive predictive value (PPV) is a function not only of the predictive validity of 

the instrument or method but also of the probability of the event being predicted. The PPV is the 

proportion of cases in a risk category that end up being reassaulted. The “extreme danger” 

category of the DA had the highest values of PPV of the instrument/method-defined risk categories 

(.438). 

Table D15. Sensitivity, specificity, and positive predictive value of instrument/methoddefined risk categorization at baseline and any physical or sexual assault during the followup. 

Sensitivity Specificity 

Positive 

Predictive 

Value 

Danger Assessment

Increased Danger 

Severe Danger 

Extreme Danger 

.917 

.704 

.477 

.219 

.492 

.684 

.377 

.417 

.438 

DV-MOSAIC

 ratings 5-7

 ratings 8-10 

.826 

.360 

.074 

.680 

.310 

.317 

Domestic Violence Screening 

Instrument

 High risk .532 .486 .345 

K-SID

Moderate risk 

 High risk 

 Very high risk 

.658 

.316 

.274 

.417 

.759 

.782 

.332 

.366 

.356 

Victim’s Perception of Risk

 Medium risk 

 High risk 

.697 

.556 

.472 

.589 

.385 

.391 

The sensitivity of the instrument/method-defined risk categories for predicting severe and 

potentially lethal abuse was generally greater than was the case for predicting any physical or 

sexual abuse (Table D16). Again, the “increased danger” category of the DA had both the highest 

sensitivity and the lowest specificity. Comparing the sensitivity of victims’ perceived risk of being 

seriously hurt by their (ex)partners against that of the risk assessment instrument or method 

categories, the DVSI is similar, the DV-MOSAIC is notably lower, all but the extreme category of 

the DA is higher, and all but the moderate risk category is lower for the K-SID. The specificity of 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 60

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
victims’ perceived risk for serious assault was higher than that of the DVSI, higher than the 

elevated and high danger categories of the DA, and higher than the moderate risk category of the 

K-SID but lower than the very high risk category of the K-SID and the highest ratings of the DVMOSAIC and extreme danger on the DA. The PPVs of the DA and DVSI were slightly greater than 

victim’s perception of risk but none of the PPV’s were particularly high, probably related to the 

infrequency of severe physical or sexual assault during follow-up. 

Table D16. Sensitivity, specificity, and positive predictive value of instrument/methoddefined risk categorization at baseline and severe physical or sexual assault during the 

follow-up. 

Sensitivity Specificity 

Positive Predictive 

Value 

Danger Assessment

Increased Danger 

Severe Danger 

Extreme Danger 

.975 

.775 

.538 

.211 

.523 

.672 

.282 

.278 

.299 

DV-MOSAIC

 ratings 5 - 7

 ratings 8 - 10 

.983 

.458 

.071 

.679 

.168 

.214 

Domestic Violence Screening 

Instrument

 High Risk .667 .517 .258 

K-SID

 Moderate risk 

 High risk 

 Very high risk 

.672 

.281 

.250 

.408 

.740 

.768 

.185 

.178 

.178 

Victim’s Perception of Risk

 medium risk 

 high risk 

.674 

.543 

.511 

.624 

.238 

.248 

We plotted receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curves to assess the ability of each 

instrument or method to distinguish between those who experienced abuse during the follow-up 

period throughout the continuum of baseline risk scores. Sensitivity and 1-minus-specificity are the 

coordinates of the ROC curves for each value of the risk assessment score. In contrast to the 

previous analyses, ROC curves do not depend on the cut-points selected for risk categories. If the 

risk scores do not enhance prediction of future abuse, the area under the ROC curve is not 

significantly greater than .500. We calculated these ROC curves excluding the 27 victims with no 

potential exposure to the abuser during the follow-up period. For the prediction of any physical or 

sexual abuse, the area under the ROC was not statistically different from .500 for any of the risk 

assessment instruments/methods except for the DA (.635) as well as for victims’ perceived risk 

(.599) (Table D17). 

The area under the ROC curve was generally larger for the outcome of severe abuse than 

for any physical/sexual abuse. The highest value for the area under the ROC was for the DA 

predicting the likelihood of severe abuse during the follow-up (.670, p<.001). The area under the 

ROC curve for predicting severe abuse was statistically significant for the DVSI (.597, p<.05) and 

DV-MOSAIC (.589, p<.05), but not for the K-SID. The DA was the only approach to risk 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 61

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
assessment that was higher than the victim’s perception of risk for both any abuse and severe 

abuse at follow-up. 

Table D17. Area under the ROC after excluding 27 victims with no potential exposure to 

abuser during follow-up. 

Any physical or sexual abuse Severe physical or sexual 

abuse 

Danger Assessment .635 *** .670 *** 

DV-MOSAIC .513 .589*

DVSI .508 .597 ** 

K-SID .551 .537

Victim’s perception of risk .599 *** .610 ***

***

 p < .001, * p < .05 

Integration of Criminal Justice Data 

The data described above are based on victim self-reports during follow-up interviews. We 

complemented our assessment of the association between risk assessment scores and categories 

with subsequent abuse by gathering arrest data on the index perpetrators/abusers who committed 

the abusive acts that led to victims’ recruitment into the study. Only offenses committed 

subsequent to the baseline interview were considered. Relatively few (5%-7%) abusers were 

subsequently arrested for domestic violence during the follow-up period. With such a low 

prevalence of DV-related arrest, the power to detect statistically significant difference between the 

risk categories is diminished. As can be seen in Table D18, there was no significant association 

among the DA or DVSI risk categories or victims’ perception of risk and subsequent DV arrests. 

There was a significant difference among DV-MOSAIC categories, however: DV arrests were 

more common in the lowest risk category, which had only 34 cases. Similarly, there was a 

statistically significant association between risk categories and DV arrests, driven by the high 

prevalence of arrest among 29 subjects in the high-risk category. The 147 subjects in the “very 

high risk” K-SID risk category actually had the lowest prevalence of DV arrest during follow-up. A 

similar pattern was observed between the instrument-method defined risk categories and abusers 

being arrested for any violent offense. 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 62

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Table D18. Instrument-defined risk categories measured at baseline and arrest of abusers 

during follow-up excluding women with no potential exposure to their abusive partners. 

Risk category determined at 

baseline by instrument N 

Domestic 

Assault 

 n (row %) 

Any Violent 

Offense 

 n (row %)

Danger Assessment

 Variable danger 

 Increased danger 

 Severe danger 

 Extreme danger 

 Total 

108 

169 

123 

266 

666 

 7 (6.5) 

 3 (1.8) 

 4 (3.3) 

17 (6.4) 

p=.097 

13 (12.0) 

 9 ( 5.3) 

13 (10.6) 

31 (11.7) 

p=.139 

DV-MOSAIC

 Rating 3 – 4 

 Rating 5 - 7 

 Rating 8 -10 

 Total 

 34 

370 

222 

626 

 

 6 (17.6)

24 ( 6.5) 

14 ( 6.3) 

p=.045 

 6 (17.6) 

46 (12.4) 

25 (11.3) 

p=.569 

Domestic Violence Screening 

Instrument

 Not high risk 

 High risk 

 Total 

300 

351 

651 

13 (4.3) 

25 (7.1) 

p=.130 

25 ( 8.3) 

45 (12.8) 

p=.065 

K-SID

 Low risk 

 Moderate risk 

 High risk 

 Very high risk 

 Total 

252 

230 

 29 

146 

658 

12 ( 4.8) 

17 ( 7.4) 

 5 (17.2) 

 5 ( 3.4) 

p=.016 

19 (07.5) 

36 (15.7) 

5 (17.2) 

16 (11.0) 

p=.037 

Victim’s Perceived Risk of 

Reassault

 Low risk 

 Medium risk 

 High risk 

 Total 

517 

177 

603 

1297 

36 (7.0) 

10 (5.6) 

31 (5.1) 

p=.431 

56 (10.8) 

18 (10.2) 

71 (11.8) 

p=.795 

In addition to examining arrests as a separate outcome, we also combined the arrest data 

with the survey data on reassault to provide a more complete measure of abusers’ reassault 

experience (Table D19). Situations in which subjects report no further abuse yet the abuser was 

arrested for domestic assault following the baseline interview could be due to under-reporting by 

subjects or abusers assaulting other intimate partners. The general pattern between 

instrument/method-defined risk categories and the likelihood of reassault during the follow-up 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 63

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
period observed with victim survey data was apparent when the survey data were combined with

arrest data from criminal justice agencies. The prevalence of reassault increased with higher 

levels of risk categories for the DA, but was unrelated to categories derived from the other 

instruments/methods. Victims’ perceptions of their own risk were also unrelated to this outcome 

measure. When the outcome was confined to severe assaults and/or DV arrest, the DVSI risk 

classifications also reached significance (28.9% in the high risk group vs. 18.4% in the low risk 

group). 

Table D19. Instrument-defined risk categories at baseline and reassault experience during 

follow-up using both survey and arrest data excluding women with no possible contact with 

their abusers. 

Risk category determined at 

baseline by instrument 

N 

Any Assault or DV 

arrest 

 n (row %) 

Severe Assault or 

DV arrest 

 n (row %) 

Danger Assessment

 Variable danger 

 Increased danger 

 Severe danger 

 Extreme danger 

 Total 

 67 

 98 

 79 

144 

388 

15 (22.4) 

29 (29.6) 

31 (39.2) 

64 (44.4) 

p=.007 

 7 (10.4) 

17 (17.3) 

21 (26.6) 

44 (30.6) 

p=.005 

DV-MOSAIC

 Rating 3 – 4 

 Rating 5 - 7 

 Rating 8 -10 

 Total 

23 

218 

126 

367 

 8 (34.8) 

75 (34.4) 

41 (32.5) 

p=.935 

5 ( 6.6) 

41 (18.8) 

30 (23.8) 

p=.540 

Domestic Violence Screening 

Instrument

 Not high risk 

 High risk 

 Total 

179 

194 

373 

67 (37.4) 

71 (36.6) 

p=.868 

33 (18.4) 

56 (28.9) 

p=.018 

K-SID

 Low risk 

 Moderate risk 

High risk 

Very high risk 

Total 

151 

131 

 11 

 89 

382 

 44 (29.1) 

44 (33.6) 

5 (45.5) 

32 (36.0) 

p=.540 

26 (17.2) 

30 (22.9) 

2 (18.2) 

18 (20.2) 

p=.694 

Victim’s Perceived Risk of 

Reassault

 Low risk 

 Medium risk 

 High risk 

 Total 

any sev.

313 355 

93 87 

343 303 

749 735 

 88 (28.1) 

 37 (39.8) 

136 (39.7) 

p=.005 

68 (19.2) 

19 (21.8) 

77 (25.4) 

p=.155 

 

Table D20 shows sensitivity, specificity and positive predictive values calculated for the combined 

outcome of victim reported reassault and arrest during the follow-up period. The data show slight 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 64

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
improvement in PPV for all approaches (including victims’ predictions) over the values calculated

with victim reported outcomes alone (shown in D15). 

Table D20. Sensitivity, specificity, and positive predictive value of instrument-defined risk 

categories at baseline and victim reported physical/sexual assault or domestic violence 

arrest during the follow-up. 

Sensitivity

Any Severe 

Specificity

Any Severe 

Positive 

Predictive 

Power 

Any Severe 

Danger Assessment

Increased danger 

Severe danger 

Extreme danger 

.892 .921 

.683 .730 

.460 .494 

.209 .201 

.486 .472 

.679 .666 

.386 .255 

.426 .291 

.444 .306 

DV-MOSAIC

 Rating 5-7 

 Rating 8-10 

.935 .934 

.331 .395 

.061 .062 

.652 .672 

.342 .187 

.325 .238 

DVSI

 High risk .514 .629 .477 .514 .366 .289 

K-SID

Moderate risk 

 High risk 

 Very high risk 

.648 .658 

.296 .263

.256 .237 

.415 .408 

.752 .739 

.775 .768 

.349 .216 

.366 .200 

.356 .202 

Victim’s Perceived Risk

 Medium risk 

 High risk 

.663 .585 

.521 .470 

.461 .494 

.576 .611 

.397 .246 

.397 .254 

Finally, we conducted an ROC curve analysis excluding the 27 victims with no potential exposure 

to the abuser during follow-up and using the Criminal Justice data as well as victim self report 

(Table D21). The DA was the only risk assessment approach that distinguished future abuse 

cases from non-abuse cases better than chance, however, the area under the ROC curve 

approached statistical significance for the DVSI prediction of severe reassaults (p=.055). Victim’s 

expectations about their risk for reassault and serious injury were significantly better than chance, 

but the area under the ROC curves was less than that for the DA

Table D21. Area under the ROC curve after excluding 27 victims with no potential exposure 

to abuser during follow-up with Criminal Justice data. 

Any physical or sexual 

abuse during followup from victim self 

report &/or CJ data 

Severe physical or 

sexual reassault from 

victim self report &/or 

CJ data

Danger Assessment .613 *** .628 ***

DV-MOSAIC .474 .525 

DVSI .487 .567 (p=.055) 

K-SID .511 .523 

Victim’s perceived risk .572 ** .551 *

*** p < .001, *

 p < .05

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 65

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Association Between Risk Assessment Scores and Protective Measures Taken 

The bivariate associations between baseline risk assessment scores and subsequent 

abuse described above may significantly understate the ability of the instruments/method to 

discern risk for future assault because the most dangerous abusers and circumstances are likely to 

prompt greater efforts to protect victims from future violence. For this reason, we examined 

associations between risk assessment scores and actions taken to protect victims from further 

abuse. Table D22a below shows that, except for K-SID, instrument/method-defined high-risk 

categories were associated with increased efforts of victims to escape their abusive ex-partners. 

For example, women who scored in the “extreme danger” category of the DA were over five times 

more likely than women in the “variable danger” category to go someplace where the abusers 

could not find them (40.5% in extreme danger vs. 7.4% in the variable danger category). Victims in 

the high-risk level based on their DV-MOSAIC score were twice as likely as women who scored at 

lower levels of risk to go someplace where their abusers could not find them (44.8% vs. 24.9%). 

Women in the high-risk categories for the DA, DV-MOSAIC, and the DVSI were more likely than 

other victims to go to a shelter for battered women. Nearly one of every five victims in the DVMOSAIC highest level ratings went to a shelter in contrast to 1 in every 13 at the lower ratings. 

While there was no association between risk category and the victim leaving town, the 

likelihood that the victim had no voluntary contact with her abusive ex-partner increased at higher 

levels of risk determined by the instruments/method at baseline (Table D22a). About half of the 

victims in the highest risk categories chose to have no contact with their abusive ex-partners during 

the follow-up period. Women in high-risk categories at baseline also tended to be more likely than 

other women during the follow-up period to receive counseling, do safety planning, change the 

locks on their doors, or obtain a weapon for protection, usually mace or pepper spray3 (data not 

shown). 

 

As predicted, the likelihood that the abuser was in jail during all or part of the follow-up 

period was, in general, higher in the instrument/method-derived high-risk categories (Table D22b). 

Almost one-third (28.8%) of abusers in the extreme danger category of the DA went to jail during 

the follow-up period compared with only 10.3% in the “increased danger” category. For both DVMOSAIC and the DVSI, abusers in the high-risk category were more than twice as likely to go to 

jail during the follow-up period. There was no pattern in the relationship between abusers leaving 

town and risk category. 

 3

 Only 2 of 769 women reported that they obtained a firearm for protection. 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 66

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Table D22a. Victims’ efforts to limit contact with abuser by instrument/method-defined risk 

category at baseline. 

n 

went where 

abuser 

couldn’t find 

her 

n (%) 

went to a

shelter 

n (%) 

left town 

n (%) 

no (voluntary) 

contact 

n (%) 

Danger Assessment 

Variable danger 

Increased Danger 

Severe Danger 

Extreme Danger 

 68 

 99 

80 

153 

400 

 5 ( 7.4) 

 29 (29.3) 

 22 (27.5) 

62 (40.5) 

p < .001 

0 ( 0 ) 

 8 ( 8.1) 

 9 (11.3) 

23 (15.0) 

p =.006 

2 ( 0) 

 9 ( 9.1)

 4 ( 5.0) 

14 ( 9.2) 

p = .284 

 9 (13.2) 

40 (40.4) 

35 (43.8) 

80 (52.3) 

p<.001 

DV-MOSAIC 

 3-4 rating 

 5-7 rating 

 8-10 rating 

 Total 

 23 

225 

134 

382 

 0 ( 0.0) 

56 (24.9) 

60 (44.8) 

p < .001 

 0 ( 0.0) 

18 ( 8.0) 

26 (19.4) 

p=.001 

 0 ( 0.0) 

13 ( 5.8) 

13 ( 9.7) 

p = .148 

 5 (21.7) 

94 (42.0) 

71 (53.0) 

p=.010 

DVSI 

 Not high risk

 High risk 

 Total 

176 

212 

388 

45 25.6) 

73 (34.4) 

p = .059 

12 ( 6.8) 

33 (15.6) 

p=.007 

11 ( 6.3) 

10 ( 4.7) 

p=.506 

 55 (31.3) 

114 (53.8) 

p<.001 

K-SID 

Low risk 

Moderate risk 

 High risk 

 Very high risk 

153 

136 

 12 

 90 

391 

42 (27.5) 

39 (29.5) 

 2 (16.7) 

34 (37.8) 

p = .241 

15 ( 9.8) 

11 ( 8.1) 

 1 ( 8.3) 

12 (13.3) 

p=.635 

 10 (6.5) 

 10 ( 7.4) 

1 ( 8.3) 

8 (8.9) 

p=.925 

52 (34.2) 

59 (43.7) 

 6 (50.0) 

48 (53.3) 

p=.030 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 67

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Table D22b. Abuser went someplace during follow-up where he could not see her by 

instrument/method-defined risk categories at baseline. 

n 

abuser went 

someplace 

where he 

couldn’t see her 

n (%) 

abuser went to 

jail 

n (%) 

abuser left 

town 

 n (%) 

Danger Assessment

Variable danger 

Increased Danger 

Severe Danger 

Extreme Danger 

Total 

 68 

 99 

80 

153 

400 

 12 (17.6) 

 29 (29.3) 

 36 (45.0) 

 57 (37.3) 

p = .006 

 7 (10.3)

 15 (15.2)

 13 (16.2)

 44 (28.8)

p=.002 

1 ( 1.5) 

 7 ( 7.1) 

 17 (21.3) 

 9 ( 5.9) 

p<.001 

DV-MOSAIC

 3-4 rating 

5-7 rating 

 8-10 rating 

 Total 

 23 

225 

134 

382 

 3 (13.0)

 66 (29.3) 

 48 (35.8) 

p = .051 

 3 (13.0) 

 28 (12.4) 

 36 (26.9) 

p=.001 

 0 ( 0.0) 

25 (11.1) 

 8 ( 6.0) 

p =.080 

DVSI

 not high risk 

 high risk 

 Total 

176 

212 

388 

 44 (25.0) 

 80 (37.7) 

p = .007 

 18 (10.2) 

 54 (25.5) 

p<.001 

 14 ( 8.0) 

 18 ( 8.5) 

p=.848 

K-SID 

low risk 

moderate risk 

 high risk 

 very high risk 

153 

136 

 11 

 90 

391 

 32 (20.9) 

 50 (36.8) 

 8 (66.7) 

 34 (37.8) 

p = .004 

 14 ( 9.2) 

 27 (19.9) 

 7 (58.3) 

 25 (27.8) 

p < .001 

11 ( 7.2) 

 19 (14.0) 

 0 ( 0 ) 

 5 ( 5.6) 

p=.070 

Regression Analyses 

Given that baseline risk assessment scores and risk categories are associated with a wide 

range of factors intended to reduce victims’ risk of reassault, we estimated the relationships 

between baseline risk assessment scores both before and after controlling for these factors. 

Specifically, the models included as covariates in the models the following conditions during the 

follow-up period: length of time victim was potentially at risk for reassault during follow-up; whether 

the victim had any voluntary contact with the abuser during the follow-up period; whether the victim 

went to a shelter; whether the victim received counseling; whether the victim changed the locks on 

her doors; whether the victim got an alarm; whether the victim got pepper spray or other weapons; 

and whether the abuser was incarcerated for some of the follow-up period. We estimated 

multinomial logistic regression models for an outcome variable that collapsed categories from our 

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
8-level outcome variable into the following four categories: 1) no physical/sexual abuse, stalking or 

threatening; 2) stalking and/or threatening but no physical or sexual abuse; 3) minor or moderate 

physical/sexual abuse; and 4) severe abuse. The ability of each instrument or method to predict 

across the four categories of abuse after adjusting for potential confounders was determined by the 

difference in the –2 log likelihoods for the model that included each instrument/method risk score, 

and the reduced model that excludes the instrument/method scores. This difference follows a chisquare distribution – the higher the difference and the smaller the significance level, the greater the 

instrument or method’s contribution to predicting victim’s abuse experience during the follow-up. 

Because there is no standard scaling for the risk assessment instrument/method scores that would 

make regression coefficients comparable, we also present Wald statistics and significance levels

that assess the instrument or method’s ability to predict each specific category of abuse. 

The findings relevant to the risk assessment instruments and method are summarized in 

Table D23. The DA enhanced the predictive power of the models more than the other two risk 

assessment instruments and DV-MOSAIC. The Wald statistics for the baseline DA’s associations 

with subsequent severe or potentially lethal abuse as well as with minor or moderate abuse during 

the follow-up is several times greater than those for the other two instruments and DV-MOSAIC. 

The DA and the K-SID risk score had the only statistically significant Wald statistics for predicting 

minor to moderate levels of abuse. However, DV-MOSAIC had the highest Wald statistic for 

predicting subsequent stalking and threats. DV-MOSAIC and DVSI as well as the DA had 

statistically significant predictions for severe or potentially lethal abuse. 

We added covariates measuring victims’ baseline expectations about the likelihood that 

their abusive (ex)partners would seriously hurt them during the next 12 months to determine 

whether the instrument/method scores added predictive power over and above victims’ 

expectations. Each of the formal risk assessment instruments/methods provided statistically 

significant improvement in the model beyond the victims’ own assessment of the likelihood that 

their abusers would seriously hurt them. 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 69

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Table D23. Summary of multinomial logistic regression models for abuse type during followup. 

-2 log likelihood 

for reduced 

model a 

(df) signif. 

Severe 

Abuse b 

Wald 

(signif.) 

Minor/ 

Moderate 

Abuse 

Wald (signif.) 

Stalking and 

Threatening

Wald 

(signif.) 

Danger 

Assessment

46.71 

(3) 

<.001 34.27

(<.001) 

9.79 

(.002) 

16.78 

(<.001) 

DV-MOSAIC 26.08 

(3) 

<.001 5.05

(.025) 

0.89 

(.346) 

19.41 

(<.001) 

Domestic Violence 

Screening 

Instrument

22.40 

(3) 

<.001 10.80

(.001) 

0.14 

(.907) 

15.68 

(<.001) 

K-SID risk score 11.85 .008 0.59

(.442) 

8.98 

(.003) 

5.55 

(.018) 

Victim perceived 

risk of severe 

assault

27.63 

(3) 

<.001 21.08

(<.001) 

0.18 

(.674) 

5.60 

(.018) 

a

 The chi-square statistic is the difference in -2 log-likelihoods between the final model and a

reduced model estimated by omitting an effect from the final model. For each chi-square test, 

there are 3 degrees of freedom. 

b Forms of abuse including use of or threats with a knife or gun, beating up, “choking” 

(strangulation) with loss of consciousness, burning, forced sex, and injuries including broken

bones, internal injuries to vital organs, loss of consciousness, severe blood loss. 

Using methodology similar to that used by Heckert and Gondolf (2004), we enteredthe 

predicted probabilities generated by the binary logistic regression models with each of the risk 

assessment scores as predictors along with the other covariates described above to develop ROC 

curves and area under the curve statistics. In contrast to the area under the ROC curve statistics 

generated by the raw risk assessment scores in which only the DA had predictions greater than 

chance, all of the under the ROC curve statistics with the predicted probabilities were statistically 

significant at the .001 level (Table D24). However, only the DA and victims’ perceived risk at 

baseline were significantly associated with the odds of experiencing any physical or sexual abuse 

in the regression models that produced the predicted probabilities. The situation of significant ROC 

curve statistics while risk assessment instrument/method coefficients were not statistically 

significant in the regression models also occurred for DV-MOSAIC and K-SID predicting severe

abuse. The area under the ROC curve statistics for both outcomes (any abuse, severe abuse) 

were highest for the models using the DA. 

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Table D24. Area under the receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve using predicted 

probabilities from logistic regression models with the risk assessment scores and potential 

confounders as predictors. 

Baseline risk 

assessment predictor 

Any physical or sexual 

abuse during follow-up 

Severe physical or sexual 

abuse during follow-up 

Danger Assessment .674 *** .687 ***

DV-MOSAIC .583 * .647 ***

DVSI .595 * .616 **

KSID risk .606 *** .622 **

Victim perceived risk .619 *** .619 ***

***

 p < .001, ** p<.01, * p<.05 

Table 25 summarizes the ROC curve analyses with and without controlling for protective actions

and with and without criminal justice data (combining data from D17, D21 and D24). As with the 

previous analysis, the DA has the highest area under the curve including (columns 1 and 2) or 

excluding criminal justice data (columns 3-6) and controlling for (columns 5-6) or not controlling for 

(columns 1-4) protective actions. The other methods perform differently under the different 

conditions, with DV-MOSAIC second highest with severe reassault, without criminal justice records 

and controlling for protective actions; the DVSI second for any re-assault, without criminal justice 

records and controlling for protective actions; and Victim Assessment of Risk second for conditions 

without controlling for protective actions. 

Table D25. Summary Table - Comparative areas under the ROC curve with and without CJ data, 

and with and without controlling for protective actions taken 

Method 

Any reassault 

(w/CJ 

data) 

(n=1307) 

Severe reassault 

(w/CJ data) 

(n=1307) 

Any reassault 

w/o CJ 

data 

(n=782) 

Severe

re-assault 

w/o CJ 

data 

(n=782) 

Any re- assault 

w/o CJ data 

controlling for 

protective 

actions 

(n=782) 

Severe reassault w/o 

CJ data

controlling for 

protective 

actions 

(n=782) 

Danger 

Assessment 

 .613 *** .628 *** .635 *** .670 *** .674 *** .687 ***

DV-MOSAIC .474 .525 .513 .589* .583 * .647 ***

DVSI .487 .567 .508 .597 ** .595 * .616 **

K-SID .511 .523 .516 .514 .606 *** .622 **

Victim assessment 

of risk 

 .572 ** .551 * .599 *** .610 *** .619 *** .619 ***

*

 p < .05, **p<.01, ***p<.001 

The findings from the regression analyses described thus far indicate whether the risk 

assessment scores significantly improve the prediction of subsequent abuse by a violent partner 

better than by chance. While the likelihood ratio chi-square statistics and significance levels allow 

for comparisons across instruments/method, it is nevertheless difficult to interpret with these 

statistics alone how well each risk assessment score enhances prediction. To enhance 

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
interpretability of the regression findings and to assess the utility of the cut-points derived by the 

instrument authors, we re-estimated the models using dummy variables to represent differences in 

the probability of reassault after baseline assessment across different categories of risk for each 

instrument or method after controlling for the effects of protective actions. The adjusted odds ratios 

derived from those analyses for the risk categories are presented in Table D25. These adjusted 

odds ratios can be interpreted as the odds of the specific category of abuse (e.g., severe abuse) 

occurring among women in the category relative to women in the reference category (e.g., odds in 

high risk group vs. odds in low risk group). The reference group in each analysis is the lowest risk 

category (“Variable Danger” for the DA and “Low Risk” for the K-SID). 

As was the case when the risk assessment scores were analyzed as continuous variables, 

the DA provides the strongest predictive validity when categories of risk are assessed in the 

regressions (Table D26). The most dramatic effects for the DA are observed for predicting severe 

and potentially lethal forms of abuse: the odds were 17 times higher in the Extreme Danger 

category and 11 times higher in the Severe Danger category compared with the odds in the 

Variable Danger category. The ability of the DA categories to predict subsequent stalking and 

threatening behaviors was also impressive. For example, the odds that a victim would be stalked or 

threatened during the follow-up period were 6 times higher in the Extreme Danger category and 

nearly 3 times higher in the Severe Danger category than in the Variable Danger category. The 

data in Table D25 also reveal that the adjusted odds for experiencing severe or potentially lethal 

abuse were 6.5 times higher in the highest ratings groups for DV-MOSAIC than in the lowest. 

However, this difference was not statistically significant due to the very small number of cases 

(n=23) in the lowest risk category. The largest difference between DV-MOSAIC risk groups was 

observed for subsequent threats and stalking (with no physical or sexual abuse) where the odds 

were 11 times higher in the group with the highest rankings than in the group with the lowest 

rankings. High-risk status on the DVSI was associated with a 2.5-fold increased odds of severe 

abuse and a 4.7 increased odds of being stalked or threatened with violence. After controlling for 

the effects of protective strategies, K-SID risk categorization did not significantly enhance 

prediction of subsequent as measured by the 4-level abuse outcome variable. Nevertheless, the 

odds of experiencing minor-to-moderate level physical abuse and threats and stalking were 

significantly higher in the “very high risk” K-SID group compared to the “low risk” group. Based on 

the –2 log likelihoods for reduced models, categorization based upon victims’ baseline self 

assessment of their risk of being seriously hurt was more accurate in predicting victims’ status on 

the 4-level abuse outcome variable than was categorization based on the K-SID or DV-MOSAIC. 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 72

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Table D26. Adjusted odds ratios and overall test of risk assessment categories on 

effects on abuse during the follow-up period. 

-2 log likelihood for 

reduced model a 

(df, significance)

Severe 

Abuse b

aOR 

(signif.)

Minor/ 

Moderate 

Abuse 

aOR 

(signif.)

Stalking and 

Threatening

aOR 

(signif.)

Danger Assessment

 Increased Danger 

 Severe Danger 

 Extreme Danger 

49.99 

(9, p<.001) 3.7 

(.056) 

11.0 

(<.001) 

17.2 

(<.001) 

2.7 

(.045) 

2.1 

(.200) 

12.7 

(.004) 

2.7 

(.103) 

2.7 

(.123) 

6.5 

(.002) 

DV-MOSAIC

 5-7 ratings 

 8-10 ratings 

 21.35

(6, p=.002) 3.4 

(.247) 

6.5 

(.079) 

2.5 

(.259) 

2.2 

(.157) 

4.2 

(.175) 

11.4 

(.022) 

Domestic Violence 

Screening Instrument

 High risk 

25.77 

 (3, p<.001) 2.5 

(.003) 

1.1 

(.739) 

4.7 

(<.001) 

K-SID

 Medium risk 

 High risk 

 Very high risk 

 

13.57 

(9, p=.138) 1.2 

(.682) 

1.6 

(.603) 

1.2 

(.617) 

1.2 

(.655) 

4.9 

(.060) 

3.2 

(.007) 

1.0 

(.992) 

2.0 

(.454) 

2.2 

(.037) 

Victim Perceived Risk

 Medium risk 

 

 High risk 

30.16 

(6, < .001) 2.1 

(.035) 

2.7 

(<.001) 

1.8 

(.084) 

0.8 

(.468) 

1.9 

(.059) 

1.8 

(.013) a The chi-square statistic is the difference in -2 log-likelihoods between the final model and a 

reduced model estimated by omitting an effect from the final model. For each chi-square test, 

there are 3 degrees of freedom. 

b Forms of abuse included use of or threats with a knife or gun, beating up, “choking” 

(strangulation) with loss of consciousness, burning, forced sex, and injuries including broken

bones, internal injuries to vital organs, loss of consciousness, and severe blood loss. 

E. DISCUSSION 

This study is a landmark prospective field trial of three instruments and one threat assessment 

system. It was complicated to implement and the results are complicated to interpret. We have 

considerable new information and exciting results from the trial, but one of the realities of the 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 73

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
science of risk assessments is that there are many ways to evaluate the validity of an instrument 

and the individual risk factors or domains of inquiry of a threat assessment system. Our results 

help in the evaluation of these strategies for assessing risk or threat in the area of domestic 

violence but do not give us a definitive answer as to what instrument or method a particular agency 

should be using, or the absolute utility of these methods. 

Before we turn to a discussion of the results, it is important to understand both the strengths and 

limitations of the study. Among its strengths are the experience and expertise of the research 

team, the successful random assignment of the instruments and method, the large sample size, 

the multiple sources of participants in the study (courts, law enforcement, shelters, health care and 

victim services), the multiple sites in our two most populous states, the collaboration of the team 

with the criminal justice system and domestic violence service agencies in the locales studied, the 

instrumentation of the study, the linkage of victim and re-arrest data, and the in-depth, multiple 

approach analytic strategies employed including substantial controls for baseline danger and other 

self-protective steps taken by victims. Although the strengths are many, the limitations are also 

important to take into account. The attrition rate (40%) was disappointing in spite of careful 

attention to strategies suggested in the literature such as obtaining alternate contacts and obtaining 

the participants’ permission to have these alternate contacts give the investigator new contact 

information. Our compensation for interviews was not particularly large, and perhaps if larger could 

have been more of an incentive. We were able to obtain additional participation by sending letters 

out to the safe address indicated by participants reminding them of the $30 compensation for the 

second interview ($50 for most of the NYC sample, those interviewed in the courts). We were 

able to raise the NYC participation rate from 54 to 57% with that strategy.. However, further pursuit 

of this strategy was hampered by the fact that we did not receive IRB approval to send the 

lettersuntil we were close to the time that the follow-up interviews had to end. We also found 

original recruitment to be far slower than anticipated due to a whole host of implementation issues 

and we were still enrolling participants for Time 1 interviews when we were initiating Time 2 followups. This stretched already hard-pressed staff and resources further than was optimal for full 

attention to retention. 

In spite of the relatively low retention rate, there were few significant differences between those 

who returned and those who did not: those who returned were less likely to be unemployed, more 

likely to be Hispanic and somewhat less severely abused than those that did not. Importantly, 

there were no significant differences in mean baseline risk assessment scores between those 

retained and those lost at follow-up. This finding strengthens the case that there was not 

systematic bias introduced by the attrition in the study, although the fact that those retained scored 

significantly lower on frequency of severe abuse raises some question. Furthermore, although our 

sample was large enough to carry out our major analyses with sufficient power, the attrition 

resulted in some subgroup analyses having empty cell sizes and lower than optimal power. 

Another significant limitation was our inability to implement the DV-MOSAIC threat assessment 

system in the way it is intended to be used. Rather than a trained assessor using the DV-MOSAIC 

system as a guide for assessing risk after collecting information from the victim and the criminal 

justice records, the only way to use DV-MOSAIC in the study design was to translate the domains 

of inquiry and the multiple possible responses contained with the DV-MOSAIC format (with its 

embedded protective as well as risk factors) to a questionnaire format. This made for a long 

questionnaire. The DV-MOSAIC developers also caution that the 1-10 scoring is not meant to be a 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 74

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
ratio level scale (with statistically supported uniform intervals between points) but rather an easily 

understood indicator of escalating threat. However, for the statistical procedures we employed, we 

had to treat the scale as if it were ratio level. Our division of the scale into 4 levels was also our 

decision to enable the use of certain statistical procedures and enhance comparability with the 

divisions suggested for use by the other instruments, not what was intended by the DV-MOSAIC 

developers. The ROC curve analysis is probably the most accurate assessment of the threat 

assessment characteristics of the 10-point scale of DV-MOSAIC. 

Readers of this report should note that the principal investigator on this study is the author of the 

DA. To guard against any possible bias in interpreting the findings, the two co-PI’s, who have no 

professional stake in the DA and are appropriately questioning about DV risk assessment in 

general, were primarily responsible for the implementation of the study and carefully interrogated 

all results and their interpretation. The input of the Technical Work Group also has assisted in 

maintaining the objectivity of the final report. 

The other issue with the DA is that we had proposed to evaluate the new version of the DA with its 

weighted scoring and levels of risk that has been developed as a result of the findings of the 11-city 

study (Campbell, Webster, Koziol-McLain et al., 2003). Unfortunately, when the baseline 

questionnaire was designed, there was one item about arrest about which a final decision had not 

yet been made as to whether to include it on the revised DA and how it would be worded. The 

arrest variable had turned out to be protective in the 11-city study which is the opposite of some of 

the work on reassault (e.g. Jackson et al., 2003) although consistent with reports of arrest as a 

deterrent at least for those with a stake in conformity (Maxwell, Garner & Fagan, 2001). We 

therefore were re-examining all the data related to this item and making sure it was a valid finding 

plus testing various wordings of the item in practice settings before making this decision. When we 

decided how to include the item in the revised DA, we had already collected the majority of Time 1 

data and therefore only had prior DV arrest information on half the perpetrators, from the 

participants who were administered the K-SID. In most cases, including the arrest item as a 

protective item improves the validity of the DA but this information is not presented in this report in 

order to preserve the general comparability of the findings in terms of sample size. 

Finally, although we have completed extensive analyses, analysis is not yet complete. Additional 

analyses will be completed on this data set for peer reviewed publications over the next few years. 

We particularly still have work to do in examining the predictive value of the other potential risk 

factors we included and analysis of individual items. Modification of current risk assessment 

approaches and development of others can be informed by our findings in that realm. 

Discussion of Findings 

Reliability. Although internal consistency is arguably not an appropriate standard for risk 

assessment instruments since a) they are intended to combine independent risk factors rather than 

measure a one-dimensional construct, b) they aim at brevity, and c) they typically use dichotomous 

responses. These characteristics all tend to lower alpha coefficients. Nonetheless, the DA and the 

DVSI both achieved respectable internal consistency overall (Standardized Alpha = .76 and .63 

respectively) within most of the ethnic groups. The DVSI was less internally consistent among 

Spanish speaking and/or foreign born participants and is also shorter (12 items) than the DA. The 

smaller number of items may explain the slightly lower internal consistency. Similar Alpha 

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Coefficients for the DA have been reported in other studies, but internal consistency has not been 

reported in prior work for either the DVSI or the K-SID. The K-SID was far less internally consistent 

(Standardized Alpha = .05) and also the shortest of the three instruments at only 10 items. 

The DV-MOSAIC IQ Score calculates the number of missing answers, with the premise that over a 

certain percentage of missing responses calls into question the accuracy of the results, showed 

adequate data for assessments from most respondents. Only 2.7% of the participants overall had 

a lower IQ Score than is considered acceptable by de Becker and associates. The highest 

percentages of unacceptably low IQ scores were found among Hispanic/Latina respondents (4.2%) 

and those who spoke Spanish (3.6%). 

Concurrent Validity. 

All of the instruments and DV-MOSAIC had evidence of concurrent validity in terms of significant 

correlation with frequency and severity of physical abuse at baseline as measured by the CTS2, 

with the DA having the strongest correlation (.459) and the K-SID the weakest (.134) with the DVSI 

(.37) and DV-MOSAIC (.355) in between. None of these correlations is strong, but it can be 

argued that they should not be: if these threat and risk assessment strategies were redundant with 

a measure of severity and frequency of current abuse, a measure of past abuse could be used 

instead of a risk or threat assessment. In addition, it can be posited that concurrent construct 

validity is not as important in evaluation risk assessment methods as it is with conventional 

instruments (Hilton et al., 2004). Even so we correlated the mean score of the risk assessment 

methods with the woman’s prediction of the likelihood of physical abuse and severe harm in two 

separate items as another measure of concurrent validity. Except for the K-SID, all the instruments 

had significant but weak correlations in the expected direction, with the DV-MOSAIC (.18 and .15 

for physical abuse & severe harm, respectively) and the DA (.15 and .18) having the strongest 

correlations and the DVSI somewhat weaker (.15 and .12). These correlations were far weaker 

than expected, given the findings from previous studies of the accuracy of victims’ prediction of risk 

(Gondolf & Heckert, 2003; Goodman, Dutton & Bennett, 2000; Weisz, Tolman, & Saunders, 2000). 

Unlike these studies, we asked two separate questions on risk of re-assault and risk of serious 

harm, but the questions were derived from those previous studies. 

Assessing Predictive Ability – Bivariate Correlations 

The DA, DV-MOSAIC and DVSI correlated significantly with severity of abuse at follow-up, 

although these correlations were weak. The K-SID did not. Removing the 27 women never 

exposed to the possibility of re-assault during the follow-up period increased the correlations to .38 

for the DA, .21 for the DV-MOSAIC and .15 for the DVSI. All three instruments had even lower

correlations with frequency and severity of physical assault (and frequency and severity of sexual 

assault), with the DV-MOSAIC correlations failing to reach significance. However, the frequency 

and severity of future assault (as a continuous variable) is not what these instruments and DVMOSAIC are designed to assess (but rather whether or not severe assault will occur), so the latter 

findings are interesting but probably not a useful standard to hold the risk assessment methods to. 

The mean scores of the DA, DV-MOSAIC and the DVSI all correlated significantly with the 8 levels 

of severity of abuse that we proposed as one of our major outcome variables. In addition, the DA 

levels of danger, the highest (8-10) ratings versus scores lower than 8 based on the DV-MOSAIC 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 76

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been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
domains of inquiry and the DVSI low and high risk levels all showed a pattern of correctly 

classifying participants into the levels of abuse. The K-SID did not show either of these patterns. 

One issue with these analyses is the validity of the severity of abuse categories developed by the 

research team. Although there were significant correlations with the CTS2, the WEB scale and 

HARASS, those correlations were not strong. The threats and stalking level was associated with 

higher levels of risk than low physical abuse on all of the instruments/method. Placing stalking and 

threats at a higher level of severity of outcomes than low level physical abuse may actually be a 

more accurate placement given the associations of stalking and threats to kill with intimate partner 

femicide (Campbell et al., 2003). 

Another issue is that, although our measures of severe violence included potentially lethal acts, we 

did not attempt to find actual or attempted homicides among our cases, and our study cannot really 

address the prediction of those outcomes. Interestingly, however, there were some risk factors 

that are associated with lethality in the literature but were not associated with risk of reassault in 

this study. Specifically, the abuser having access to a gun and prior threats with a weapon are 

predictive of lethality (Campbell et al., 2003), but were not predictive of reassault. That finding is

simple to interpret: use of a weapon facilitates murder, but is not necessary to assault. In addition, 

suicidality and severe depression are predictive of lethality, particularly of homicide-suicide, but are 

not associated with the risk of reassault or severity. 

Reassault and Women’s Perceptions and Actions 

Almost one third (30.9%) of our participants had experienced some sort of physical or sexual reassault at Time 2, including 86 women (11%) who had experienced a severe, potentially lethal act. 

This percentage of re-assault is within the range of what has been reported in other research 

(Dutton, 1995; Block, 1999; Saunders, 1995; Ford & Regoli, 1992; Davis, Taylor, & Maxwell, 2000). 

Breaking out the different levels of severity of re-assault and other forms of abuse provides new 

and potentially extremely useful information. If we remove the 27 women for whom there was no 

chance of re-victimization because the perpetrator was in jail the entire time or otherwise totally 

unable to contact her, the proportion of those re-assaulted is only slightly higher (32.6%) or almost 

exactly one third. We also included verbal and psychological abuse and harassment in our 

outcome measures and found that only 16% of the women reported no repeat abuse of any kind at 

time two. 

Women’s perceptions of risk according to the questions we asked about likelihood of re-assault or 

serious harm were not significantly correlated with severity of re-assault in bivariate correlations

but, as has been reported in previous research (Gondolf & Heckert, 2003; Goodman, Dutton & 

Bennett, 2000; Weisz, Tolman, & Saunders, 2000), victims’ predictions were significantly 

associated with re-assault as a dichotomous outcome, with a risk ratio of 1.8 for any re-assault. 

Collapsing the two highest and two lowest levels of danger on the DA, there was a risk ratio of 2.5 

for any re-assault and 4.6 for severe assault. The DVSI significantly predicted risk of severe reassault only (risk ratio of 1.8 compared to 1.9 for victim perception of risk of severe re-assault). 

In addition to the victims being impressive predictors of their own risk, it is important to note the 

remarkable extent and array of the actions these women took to escape future assault and abuse 

from these perpetrators. Women in the highest-risk categories of the DA and the DVSI and at the 

highest ratings of DV-MOSAIC were more likely to take actions to escape their abusive ex-partners 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 77

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
or otherwise decrease their risk. They were significantly more likely to go someplace where the 

abusers could not find them (e.g. 41.3% in the extreme danger category of the DA vs. 4.3% in the 

variable danger category; 44.4% of those at the highest ratings on DV-MOSAIC vs. 23% at the 

lower ratings). Women in the highest-risk categories for the DA and the DVSI and the highest 

ratings for the DV-MOSAIC were more likely than other victims to go to a shelter for battered 

women (e.g. 6.8% at low risk versus 15.6% of those at high risk on the DVSI). The likelihood that 

the victim had no voluntary contact with her abusive ex-partner increased to approximately 50% at 

higher levels of risk at baseline DA and DVSI and the K-SID as well as at the highest ratings on 

DV-MOSAIC. Women in high-risk and ratings categories at baseline also tended to be more likely 

than other women during the follow-up period to receive counseling, do safety planning, change 

the locks on their doors, or obtain a weapon for protection, usually mace or pepper spray. The 

system also responded to these cases that were at the highest levels of risk on all four baseline 

assessments with about 25% of the highest risk categories going to jail compared to about 10% of 

the lower risk level perpetrators. Thus, women’s actions suggested that they were predicting risk 

of re-assault in concordance with the risk assessment instruments and strategies we were 

evaluating, and taking effective steps to reduce the risk of assault. These actions were also 

correlated with victims’ own perception of risk that their partner or ex-partner would harm them. 

To the extent that victims were successful in escaping or diminishing their chance of re-assault, the 

actions of the participants and system interventions may have resulted in an understatement of the 

ability of the instruments and method to discern risk for future assault because the most dangerous 

abusers and circumstances are likely to prompt greater protective efforts. That protective actions 

were more likely in higher risk cases and that they were often effective is by and large a hopeful 

sign for the field. It is, however, a limitation of the study. We tried to take these actions into 

account by eliminating the 27 women from our analyses who were never at risk for re-assault and, 

for the rest of the sample, taking into account time at risk and other protective actions taken by the 

victim or the system. The first adjustment is presented in the bivariate analyses and both are 

adjusted for in the multivariate analyses.

Sensitivity, Specificity and Positive Predictive Power 

Predictive instruments are often evaluated on their sensitivity, specificity and positive predictive 

power based on their ability to identify the largest proportion of true positives possible (sensitivity) 

while not including false positives and at the same time correctly identifying as many true negatives 

as possible as being at low risk. An instrument with high sensitivity casts the kind of wide net that 

is needed to be sure there are few false negatives (victim is declared at low risk but is reassaulted) while high specificity insures that there are few false positives (few perpetratorsare 

falsely declared to be high risk and deprived of liberty unnecessarily or on false premises). There 

was a wide range of sensitivity on our three instruments and one method with most risk levels of 

most of the methods having the usual tradeoff of low specificity with high sensitivity and vice versa. 

The best balance was the victims’ perceptions of risk (.665 sensitivity and .532 specificity) and the 

high and extreme levels of risk for the DA (.871 and .492 sensitivity and .335 and .651 specificity 

respectively). At the highest ratings (8, 9, 10), the DV-MOSAIC had acceptable specificity (.653) 

but relatively low sensitivity (.371) while the DVSI had better sensitivity (.554) but lower specificity 

(.457). It is perhaps appropriate for the DVSI to have higher sensitivity but lower specificity since 

the DVSI was designed to initially identify DV cases that might be at high risk with the idea that the 

SARA would then be used with those cases for a more precise assessment of the level of risk. 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 78

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Conversely, the DV-MOSAIC was mainly designed for the criminal justice system where specificity 

is most important. Even at the highest levels or ratings of risk, and with either victim reported 

reassault or arrests, all of the approaches had a fairly high proportion of false positives. False 

positives (identifying as high risk cases when asssault did not occur during follow up), were 

approximately 30% for the DA and DV-MOSAIC, and about 25% for the K-SID. These rates are of 

concern if they are used to deny liberty to abusers unnecessarily. In addition, there was a 16-33% 

false negative rate depending on the method. These cases obviously are of serious concern 

because of victim safety. Yet criminal justice decision making relevant to cases of intimate partner 

violence in the absence of standardized risk assessment results in many false positives and false 

negatives. The performance of the tested risk assessment methods were not compared with that 

of judges or probation officers, so we cannot say whether the predictions generated by these 

methods are more or less accurate than criminal justice officials. 

Positive Predictive Value (PPV) considers sensitivity and specificity (predictive validity) of the 

instrument but also the probability of the event being predicted. The PPV of the DA, DV-MOSAIC, 

DVSI and K-SID were all within the same range, approximately .10 apart, with the DA Extreme 

Danger having the highest PPV (.438), the victim’s perception of high risk was next (.391) and the 

K-SID high risk level the next (.366). The PPV of the DVSI and DV-MOSAIC high risk levels were 

very close at .345 and .317 respectively. 

All of the instrument/method-defined risk categories had better sensitivity in predicting 

severe/potentially lethal abuse than in predicting any physical assault. The victim perception of risk 

(using the perception of risk of serious harm item) was very much the same and again quite 

impressive (sensitivity .63, specificity .563). However, sensitivity on the DA was quite a bit higher 

(> .90) at the lower levels of risk (Increased and Severe Danger). This pattern might be different 

for the victims’ perception had we divided the continuous scale into four categories instead of 

three. The DVSI and K-SID at moderate risk were approximately the same in sensitivity but all 3 

were lower in specificity. The highest ratings on the DV-MOSAIC and the Extreme level of Danger 

on the DA had higher specifictiy than the victim perception high category (6-10). In other words, 

victims’ ratings of 6-10 led to a higher proportion of false positive predictions than the highest level 

of either DV-MOSAIC or the DA. It is also interesting that the K-SID best predicted rearrest, 

exactly as it was designed to do. 

ROC Analysis 

Receiver Operator Curves (ROC) are a means of combining sensitivity and specificity information 

without depending on the cut points of the instrument or risk assessment method. They are also 

fairly straightforward to interpret since one is looking for an area under the curve significantly more 

than .50 in prediction of a future event. The ROC analysis that is probably most reasonable to 

consider is that which excludes the 27 women who were not exposed to the perpetrator. Here we 

find that for any abuse, only the DA and victim’s perception of risk are significantly better than 

chance and the DA improves upon the victim’s perception of risk but only marginally (.635 vs. 599). 

For severe re-assault, the DVSI also significantly improves on chance but is similar to the victims’ 

perception of risk of serious harm. The DA area under the curve for severe assault is .67. When 

we added predictive probabilities from multivariate analysis to take into account potential 

confounds such as time at risk, all of the ROC curves of all of the instruments and method become 

significantly greater than chance with the areas under the curves ranging from .69 (DA) to .58 (DVMOSAIC predicting any assault). However, the specific effects of the risk assessment scores in the 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 79

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
regression models that produced the probabilities for the ROC analyses were statistically 

significant only for the DA (both any abuse and severe abuse) and the DVSI for severe abuse. All 

of the risk assessment methods had modestly (no more than .02) larger areas under the curve for 

severe than for any re-assault. 

Including the criminal justice data reduced the predictive accuracy of all the methods and the 

victims’ assessments. Arrest data were available for all the participants, even those not reached at 

follow-up which increased the sample size and therefore increased the power to detect 

significance. But for those not reached at follow-up, only arrest data were available, and arrest 

data drastically underestimated the reassault rate compared to victim reports. In fact, only 18% of 

the abusers were arrested for a violent crime, and we know from those victims we reached at 

follow-up that this rate fails to capture the rates of reassault reported by victims. Therefore, tests 

using criminal justice as the only measure of reassault for 40% of the participants inflated the false 

positive rate and decreased specificity. That is, re-assault was predicted by the method but was 

not represented in the arrest data and therefore artificially lowered the area under the ROC curve 

for all methods. 

Overall, the DA and victims’ estimates were consistently better than .50, with the DA performing 

somewhat better than victims’ estimates. When controlling for the protective actions taken, all the 

methods achieved significance in predicting any assault and severe assault. All the approaches

predicted severe assault better than they predicted any abuse, especially the DV-MOSAIC. 

Controlling for protective actions improved the predictive ability of all the methods by decreasing 

the false positive rate. That is, when a method predicts risk but an action is taken that reduces or 

eliminates the possibility of reassault, the method appears to be overestimating risk (increases 

false positives). By taking into account or controlling for such protective actions, the ROC curves 

better reflect the real predictive accuracy of the methods. The accuracy of victims’ assessments 

also improved when controlling for protective actions, but they improved the least of all the 

methods. The reason for this may be that victims were taking into account their protective action 

plans when they made their assessment. 

Multivariate Models of Levels of Risk 

When the levels of risk were tested in multivariate models, the overall models were significant for 

all except the K-SID. The DA again was the most predictive but only significant (< .05) at the 

highest two levels (high and extreme) and again was most predictive for severe re-assault (aOR = 

11.0 and 17.2). The DA was also strongly predictive of stalking and threats at the two highest 

levels. The DVSI and DV-MOSAIC were also significantly predictive of severe re-assault and 

stalking. The K-SID levels of risk were not significantly predictive of severe re-assault but the 

higher two levels were predictive of minor/moderate abuse (aOR = 4.9 and 3.2) and at the highest 

level was significantly predictive of stalking and threats (aOR = 1.8). 

Predicting Risk of Sexual Re-Assault 

Generally, only the DA was successful at predicting intimate partner sexual re-assault, probably

partly because there is a question on prior intimate partner sexual assault because the forced sex 

aspect of IPV has been part of the DA author’s conceptualization. Given that 41% of our 

respondents reported having been physically forced into sex by their partner at baseline and an 

additional 20% otherwise coerced (without physical force or assault at the time of the incident but 

by threat of force or other coercive tactics), intimate partner sexual assault is indeed a concern for 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 80

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
these women. However, the other risk assessment instruments and method were not designed 

with sexual assault in mind and should not be evaluated on their ability to predict this particular 

form of domestic violence. Given the frequency of sexual abuse in intimate partner violence, 

particularly among these relatively severely abused women, it is an important factor to consider in 

future development of these types of instruments and methods and in the outcomes used in future 

research. 

Summary 

The participants were severely abused women at Time 1, with 82% having experienced severe 

abuse and all but 6% having experienced some form of physical assault by their partner or expartner. Approximately one third were re-assaulted by the end of the four to 24 month period when 

they were re-interviewed. They continued to be severely abused with 11% having experienced a 

severe, potentially lethal act. Although there were limitations to the study, valuable information 

about the three risk assessment instruments and DV-MOSAIC was gained. By most analytic 

strategies, the Danger Assessment had the strongest psychometric properties, including the 

predictive statistics. By most analytic strategies, DVSI and DV-MOSAIC also had significant 

associations with future re-assault. The K-SID was least strong under most of the analytic 

strategies; however, it did best at predicting rearrest using the criminal justice data. Some of the 

differences in results among them could be attributed to the different purposes and settings where 

these three instruments and the one threat assessment method were developed to be used. The 

K-SID was designed to be used in criminal justice settings, to assist in probation and parole (postincarceration) decisions. The goal is to predict rearrests. The DA is the only instrument that was 

meant to be an interview of victims which is the way the study was implemented. The K-SID and 

DVSI and DV-MOSAIC are meant to be filled out by criminal justice personnel primarily using 

information from criminal justice records, although DV-MOSAIC is also meant to be based on 

information from the victim. In addition, the DA and DV-MOSAIC have more severe abuse or 

potential lethality as the potential outcome being assessed, while the DVSI and K-SID are meant to 

predict risk of any re-assault. In fact, that the DVSI and K-SID did better at predicting rearrest 

using criminal justice data supports their use for those purposes and in those settings. 

The differences in purpose versus implementation of the study may help explain why none of the 

instruments or method was particularly impressive in predicting re-assault. By most analytic 

strategies, women’s perception of risk did better than the other assessment methods or almost as 

well as the DA, the most predictive of those tested. But even the women’s prediction left much of 

the re-assault unanticipated. Thus, there is much research that still needs to be done in the field. 

This study joins only about 8 other published studies that we could find that have been done to 

address the need for assessment of risk in the field of intimate partner violence. We have a long 

way to go before we can match the 95 studies in the recent Hanson and Morton-Bourgon (2004) 

meta-analysis of prediction of sexual assault. 

We found that the approaches to risk assessment we tested were high on sensitivity (.80 -.90 for 

the DA and DV-MOSAIC with cut-offs at the second lowest levels of risk), in other words they 

correctly classified most of the women that were indeed reassaulted as being at somewhat 

elevated risk. The great majority of women with the lower risk scores or ratings were not 

subsequently re-assaulted (over 80% on the DA and DV-MOSAIC; 67–72% on the DVSI and KSID). These high "true negative" and low "false negative" rates (i.e., high sensitivity) bode well for 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 81

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
victim safety, although certainly the 16-33% false negatives depending on method, the women who 

were predicted to be at low risk yet experienced violence, even severe violence, are always a 

concern. 

At these low levels of risk, the methods were also very low in specificity, a more tolerable form of 

error. At the highest levels of risk, specificity was higher, as one would hope. But even at the 

highest levels or ratings of risk, with either victim reported reassaults or arrests as the outcome 

measure, all of the approaches had a fairly high proportion of false positives (approximately 30% 

for the DA and DV-MOSAIC, about 25% for the K-SID). These low specificity figures (high false 

positives) are more of a concern for offender rights than victim safety, although they also have an 

impact on victims. If these risk assessment approaches are used as the basis for decisions, about 

one third of women being assessed might be unduly frightened and make major changes in their 

lives that may not be necessary, scarce resources will be expended on low risk cases, credibility 

will be lost, and partners might be treated with unduly harsh penalties. 

Risk assessment instruments or methods should not be the only factors considered in making 

decisions about victim safety or offender sanctions, especially at our current state of the science. 

Rather, they are meant to be one source of information among many others. When confounding 

variables were controlled in the ROC analysis, all four of the instruments performed significantly

better than .50 in predicting any or severe physical or sexual abuse during the follow-up period. 

Yet, this is not good enough. Risk assessment instruments need to perform significantly better 

than expert judgment, the view of experienced victim advocates, law enforcement officers, 

probation officers, or other practitioners, or they are not worth the time and effort they take. This 

study shows that systematic risk assessment approaches can be better predictors than the victims, 

but does not address whether they are better than experienced practitioners. However, in the field 

of sexual assault and mental health, instruments have been found to be significantly better than 

expert judgment, and a combination of instrument or systematic formal method and expert 

judgment is thought to be the best approach (Pinard & Pagani, 2000; Hanson and Morton-Bourgon, 

2004). Kropp (2004) calls this combined approach “structured professional judgment,” which is 

very similar to the threat assessment approach described by de Becker to be used with DV 

MOSAIC. Before a particular approach can be recommended unequivocally for use in the 

domestic violence realm, it must be tested in the field, comparing the predictive accuracy of the 

instrument to or in combination with expert judgment. 

 

Additional analysis is also needed on the current data to examine individual risk factors more 

closely. Across the four instruments and non-redundant items, over 100 risk factors were included 

in the interviews. Additional item analysis may shed light on which individual risk factors are most 

predictive and which might be combined into new instruments useful in different settings and for 

different purposes. 

 

We note that the women in this study took significant steps to protect themselves from further 

abuse. In fact, most participants were recruited from sites where they were already receiving 

assistance or taking action. We do not know what the effect would be on victims’ ratings of risk 

had they been given their scores on the risk assessments. Future research on the role of risk 

assessments in increasing victims’ self-protective actions is particularly needed. 

 

NIJ Risk Assessment Final Rep/March 05/ 82

This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not 

been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) 

and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Until further field research is completed, we recommend that practitioners assess risk 

systematically, with one of the methods used in this research or another method with some 

evidence of validity, and also carefully explore the victim's perception of risk (see Practitioner 

Summary). This information should be combined with all other aspects of the case, the more 

information the better, and the practitioner’s own expert judgment, as the instruments and method 

have a level of fallibility that means they should never be taken as definitive. 

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