Secondary Data Analysis on the Etiology, 

Course, and Consequences of Intimate Partner 

Violence Against Extremely Poor Women 

By Amy Salomon, Ellen Bassuk, Angela Browne, Shari S. Bassuk, Ree Dawson, and Nick 

Huntington 

2004 


NCJ 199714 

Amy Salomon, Ph.D., is with Applied Research and Consulting; Ellen Bassuk, M.D., is with the 

National Center on Family Homelessness (formerly The Better Homes Fund); Angela Browne, 

Ph.D., is with the Harvard School of Public Health; Shari S. Bassuk, Sc.D., is at Brigham and 

Women’s Hospital; Ree Dawson, Ph.D., is with Frontier Science; and Nick Huntington, M.A., is 

with the National Center on Family Homelessness (formerly The Better Homes Fund). 

This project was supported under award 98–WT–VX–0012 from the National Institute of Justice, 

Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Findings and conclusions of the research 

reported here are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position or policies of the 

U.S. Department of Justice. 
Secondary Data Analysis on the Etiology, Course, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence Against Extremely Poor Women 

Although much research has been done over the past 20 years on violence by intimates, research 

on the impact of partner violence on women who are poor has been limited. Until the mid-1990s, 

there were few inquiries into the prevalence and severity of intimate violence in communitybased samples of low-income women (see Browne and Bassuk, 1997, for review). Although 

physical abuse of women and children is found at all socioeconomic levels, studies began to 

focus on poverty as a serious risk factor for interpersonal violence (Wolfner and Gelles, 1993; 

Hotaling and Sugarman, 1990; Kaplan, 1997). Most recently, and largely in response to Federal 

welfare policy, a growing body of literature has consistently documented high rates of intimate 

partner violence among impoverished women on welfare (Browne, Salomon, and Bassuk, 1999; 

Allard et al., 1997; Browne and Bassuk, 1997; Lloyd and Taluc, 1997; Curcio, 1997). 

The current study, conducted by researchers at the National Center on Family Homelessness 

(formerly The Better Homes Fund), found that nearly two-thirds of impoverished women, most 

on public assistance, reported at least one episode of severe partner violence. Rates of childhood 

physical abuse and sexual molestation were also startlingly high, at 63 percent and 42 percent, 

respectively. When all family/intimate violence was combined across the lifespan, more than 8 in 

10 low-income single mothers were found to have experienced some form of severe violence 

(see Bassuk et al., 1996 for overview). 

With prevalence rates at this magnitude, a better understanding of impoverished women’s risk 

for partner violence, its course over time, and its impact on work and substance abuse is critical. 

The limited research on the impact of trauma on participation of women in the labor force and 

their economic well-being is a serious gap in knowledge, especially in view of welfare reform’s 

emphasis on putting poor women to work (Crowell and Burgess, 1996; Salomon, Bassuk, 

Brooks, 1996). Victimization, poverty, and the use of addictive substances among poor mothers 

may also have profound effects on the children in their care. Study findings provide important 

insight for policymakers and practitioners in designing strategies for protecting women and 

children at greatest risk of partner abuse and creating preventive and responsive interventions to 

help them escape poverty. 

Study Purposes 

This secondary data analysis project seeks to increase understanding of risk markers for adult 

partner violence, the effect of partner violence on the use of addictive substances, and the effect 

of partner violence on the capacity to maintain work among impoverished single mothers. 

Researchers have completed three papers addressing each of the three project aims (Bassuk, 

Dawson, and Huntington, submitted; Salomon, Bassuk, and Huntington, 2002; Browne, 

Salomon, and Bassuk, 1999), which include: 

♦ Aim 1. Describe patterns of partner violence in the lives of poor single mothers and delineate 

childhood and adult risk markers for partner violence. Researchers hypothesized that 

childhood molestation and inadequate nonprofessional support in adulthood would be 

associated with increased risk of partner violence. 

♦ Aim 2. Evaluate the relationship between partner violence and substance abuse among poor 

mothers, exploring the joint and independent contribution of childhood physical and sexual 

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Secondary Data Analysis on the Etiology, Course, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence Against Extremely Poor Women 

abuse, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and partners’ substance abuse. Researchers 

hypothesized that women who experienced intimate partner violence would have increased 

odds of subsequently abusing alcohol or illicit drugs. 

♦ Aim 3. Evaluate the relationship between partner violence and women’s capacity to maintain 

employment over time. Researchers hypothesized that experiencing intimate partner violence 

would decrease a woman’s capacity to maintain employment over time. 

Research Design and Methods 

Description of the Data Set 

Data for these analyses are drawn from the Worcester Family Research Project (WFRP), a 

comprehensive inquiry into the lives of 220 homeless and 216 low-income housed (never 

homeless) single mothers living in Worcester, Massachusetts (Bassuk et al., 1996). Funded by 

the National Institute of Mental Health and the Maternal and Child Health Bureau of the U.S. 

Department of Health and Human Services, this longitudinal study interviewed women at three 

points in time—at baseline and at approximately 12 months and 24 months. Baseline interviews 

covered a broad range of domains and lasted 10 to 12 hours over multiple sittings. Followup 

interviews took about 2 hours. Detailed information was available on interpersonal violence in 

the lives of extremely poor women across their lifespan. 

Respondents 

Using a case-control design, homeless mothers were randomly enrolled from Worcester’s 

emergency and transitional shelters and its two welfare motels (3.2 percent of the sample) 

between August 1992 and July 1995. All homeless women who had been in a shelter for at least 

7 days and were pregnant or had custody of at least one dependent child younger than 17 were 

asked to participate in the study. The comparison group of low-income housed mothers was 

randomly selected from women who visited Worcester’s Department of Public Welfare. To be 

eligible, comparison mothers had to have no history of homelessness; be pregnant or have 

custody of at least one dependent child younger than 17; and be currently receiving public 

assistance. Of the 436 women in the baseline study, 356 were reinterviewed between May 1994 

and November 1996 (followup 1), and 327 were again reinterviewed between September 1995 

and August 1997 (followup 2). 

At baseline, mothers were on average 27 years old; 37 percent were Hispanic (primarily Puerto 

Rican), 39 percent were non-Hispanic white, and 17 percent were African-American. The mean 

number of children was 2.2; two-thirds of women had never been married. The mean annual 

income for homeless mothers was $7,910; housed mothers had an annual income of $9,988. 

Analysis 

For this project, each of the three reports focused on a slightly different subset of women and 

used various analytic methods relevant to the questions at hand. In general, researchers first 

explored bivariate relationships to identify crude associations between variables and then used 

logistic regression modeling techniques to clarify the multivariate relationship between major 

predictors and outcomes. Researchers also took advantage of the longitudinal design to establish 

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Secondary Data Analysis on the Etiology, Course, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence Against Extremely Poor Women 

temporal ordering and ensure that predictive variables preceded outcomes of interest. Covariates 

for housing status at baseline and ethnicity were included in all models to control for important 

design and background factors. 

Findings 

The first report describes patterns of partner violence longitudinally and uses multivariate 

analyses to delineate childhood and adult risk markers for partner violence among poor and 

homeless women (Bassuk, Dawson, and Huntington, submitted). Researchers found that 

impoverished women who experienced childhood sexual abuse were significantly more likely to 

experience intimate partner violence as adults. Child sexual abuse remained the only significant 

childhood risk marker in multivariate modeling. Two aspects of women’s social supports in 

adulthood were significantly associated with increased risk of partner violence in the multivariate 

model. Women who experienced no partner violence had significantly higher levels of emotional 

support from nonprofessional network members and significantly less conflict in their 

nonprofessional network than women who reported partner violence. In addition, women with 

lower self-esteem were more likely to be victimized by abusive partners. Women were at 

greatest risk for partner violence (nearly five times the odds) when their partners had substance 

abuse problems, however. A partner’s poor work history also predicted increased risk for partner 

violence, but at a less pronounced rate. 

Study findings also indicate that although lifetime prevalence of intimate partner violence is high 

among poor women, most experiences were episodic and limited over time. Following women 

over four timeframes (i.e., age 17 until 1 year prior to the baseline interview, the year prior to the 

baseline interview, the year prior to the second interview, and the year prior to the third 

interview), the study found that less than 2 percent of women reported intimate partner violence 

across all four timeframes. Among the large group of women whose violence had stopped at 

some time before the last timeframe, about 28 percent returned to violent relationships. 

The second set of analyses focused on the relationship between intimate partner violence and the 

subsequent use of addictive substances by poor and homeless single mothers (Salomon, Bassuk, 

and Huntington, 2002). It builds on a literature that has documented strong associations between 

interpersonal violence and substance abuse, although it neither fully clarified causal relationships 

nor tested more nuanced explanatory theories. The study addressed two major questions: 1) Do 

poor women who experience intimate partner violence have increased odds of subsequently 

abusing alcohol or illicit drugs? And 2) What role, if any, do childhood victimization, adult 

PTSD, and partners’ substance abuse have in the relationship between adult partner violence and 

subsequent substance abuse in poor women? 

The study found that intimate partner violence is predictive of subsequent drug, but not alcohol, 

abuse in poor women. Controlling for all factors of interest (including age, ethnicity, education, 

marital status, homelessness, history of child sexual molestation, PTSD, partner’s alcohol/drug 

abuse, and respondent’s baseline drug use), women with a history of adult partner violence had 

nearly three times the odds of using illegal drugs during the subsequent study years than did 

women who had not experienced partner violence as adults. Reverse causation (i.e., that 

women’s substance abuse increases the likelihood that they will become involved in physically 

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Secondary Data Analysis on the Etiology, Course, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence Against Extremely Poor Women 

violent relationships) did not account for the strong association. Adjusting for past drug abuse 

did not eliminate the observed association and it was much stronger among women with no 

history of drug abuse at baseline. The study found a striking interaction between childhood 

sexual molestation and PTSD (i.e., the effect of each on subsequent drug use depended strongly 

on the presence of the other), but no interaction between partner violence and PTSD. Finally, 

women whose partners were substance abusers were twice as likely to subsequently use illicit 

drugs. 

The third paper explored the impact of recent partner violence on poor women’s capacity to 

maintain work over time (Browne, Salomon, and Bassuk, 1999). Prior empirical studies focused 

either on poor women’s desire to work or on employment history. Most found that women 

victims of partner violence were no less likely to have worked or to express a desire to work 

(Brooks and Buckner, 1996; Lloyd and Taluc, 1997). However, past research did not define work 

in terms of duration of work experience or hours of work per week. The prominent question for 

these analyses was whether extremely poor women at recent risk of partner violence are less 

likely to maintain work over time than are extremely poor women without such experiences. The 

study found that women who had experienced recent intimate partner violence had less than onethird the odds of maintaining work over time (i.e., for at least 30 hours per week for 6 months or 

more). Recent experiences with partner violence (in the past 12 months), rather than partner 

violence prior to baseline, predicted reduced capacity to maintain work during the subsequent 

year. Although alcohol/drug problems did not independently predict limited capacity to maintain 

work, mental health variables remained negatively associated with the capacity to maintain work. 

Job training, job placement services, and past employment experience were highly predictive of 

enhanced ability to maintain work over time. Controlling for multiple factors, a woman was 

about seven times more likely to be working if she received job training and four times more 

likely to be working if she received job placement services. Histories of childhood physical and 

sexual abuse were significantly associated with partner violence, but did not differentiate women 

who held jobs over time from those who did not, nor, in the final modeling, were they 

independently predictive of limited capacity to work. 

Implications for Researchers 

The three studies outlined above suggest a number of directions for future research. In the first 

study, for example, the limited influence of the individual-level factors measured by WFRP 

suggests that future research should consider contextual factors, such as policing practices (e.g., 

arrest rates of the perpetrator), as well as the complex interplay of economic, social, and cultural 

factors, in delineating risk factors for adult partner violence. The second study suggests that there 

are multiple pathways from adult partner violence to poor women’s substance abuse, supporting 

the need for further research that examines other theoretical models. Although the authors 

confined their analysis to PTSD, future research might explore other indicators of emotional 

distress that are potentially associated with both partner violence and substance abuse, such as 

depression, anxiety, or helplessness. Although this study looked exclusively at illicit drug use, 

the use and abuse of prescription drugs, especially as they relate to health and mental health 

consequences, including later illicit drug abuse, should also be examined. Finally, the third study 

suggests the need for further analyses of the mechanisms by which recent partner violence 

affects women’s ability to work and a better understanding of the dynamics that limit women’s 

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Secondary Data Analysis on the Etiology, Course, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence Against Extremely Poor Women 

stay in jobs over time. Also, future research needs to include the characteristics of children in the 

household in analyses of mothers’ work patterns and the circumstances that affect them. 

Implications for Practitioners 

As the results of this research using the WFRP data set indicate, women and children who live in 

poverty are at extremely high risk of physical and sexual victimization by intimates. For 

thousands of women, a lack of economic resources has devastating consequences for their ability 

to alter their environments or to live in safety, particularly if they have dependent children. For 

the subset of women addressed in these reports, issues related to partner violence may make it 

especially difficult to escape poverty or make the transition to independent employment as 

mandated by current welfare reform law. 

As these reports demonstrate, women who are involved with abusive partners are at significantly 

increased risk for subsequent illicit drug use and have limited capacity to maintain employment 

over time. Both these factors have a profound effect on women’s ability to be financially selfsufficient, escape violence, and live in safety. Although substance abuse did not independently 

predict incapacity to maintain employment, the authors found that when controlling for 

potentially confounding variables, women who experienced recent partner violence were far less 

likely to hold jobs over time. The significant effects of partner violence on work emerged only 

when the level and duration of work was defined more specifically. For women who are unable 

to hold jobs over time, escaping poverty through work becomes even more challenging. Lowwage entry-level employment can be transformed into work that produces true economic 

independence only when workers are able to invest enough time in the workplace to secure 

promotions or to move progressively to new and higher paying jobs. 

In addition to the contribution of abuse by partners to women’s illicit drug use, the current report 

indicates that substance abuse by partners independently contributes to women’s later drug and 

alcohol abuse. Understanding these joint and independent contributions to women’s substance 

abuse is an important step in structuring treatment and policies that respond to women’s real 

needs. Drug involvement of young women is a major contributor to their increased incarceration 

over the past 15 years and has other devastating consequences for families and society (Beck and 

Gilliard, 1995). Health and mental health risks, economic deprivation, loss of child custody, 

mounting stigma—all have been identified as long- and short-term consequences of drug abuse 

for women (Maher, 1992, Brown et al., 1994; David and Lucile Packard Foundation, 1999; 

Blume, 1992; Finkelstein et al., 1998). Practitioners report that use of illegal drugs can 

negatively affect women’s sense of self and their ability to take charge of their lives. Drug 

involvement may thus make it more difficult for women to leave abusive partners due to 

financial dependence and to protect the children in their care (Finkelstein, 1994; Finkelstein, et 

al., 1998). Furthermore, understanding the impact of partner substance abuse on a woman’s use 

of illegal substances and on her risk for partner abuse, as well as the risk in a partner’s poor job 

history, all underscore the importance of working with the offending partner to prevent further 

violence and drug abuse. 

As we also learn from these reports, children who grow up in abusive, threatening, and 

unpredictable environments are less able to protect themselves in adulthood from abusive men. 

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Specifically, sexual molestation during childhood was most highly associated with the likelihood 

of adult intimate partner violence. In addition, women with histories of childhood sexual 

molestation and diagnoses of PTSD are far more likely to abuse drugs. This report’s finding that 

survivors of child sexual molestation are vulnerable to involvement with abusive partners and to 

subsequent PTSD and drug abuse suggests an important direction for programs and policies. 

Programs that serve drug-abusing women need to better understand the impact of trauma on 

health and mental health across the lifespan. Relapse and treatment may be compromised if 

issues related to childhood sexual molestation, its interaction with PTSD, and adult partner 

violence are not identified. Targeted treatment and prevention strategies that start in early 

childhood, including parenting programs designed for survivors of child sexual abuse, are 

essential. 

These reports also suggest the importance of nonprofessional supports, such as family, friends, 

and neighbors, in protecting women from involvement with abusive partners. Enabling women to 

sustain work over time may provide an opportunity to develop more robust and protective 

support systems in the workplace and to escape poverty. The findings reported here demonstrate 

the positive impact of job training and placement services on women’s capacity to maintain 

employment over time. They also point to the importance of developing job-related supports for 

welfare-to-work efforts that are sensitive to women’s psychosocial needs, especially as they 

relate to mental health and violence. The episodic nature of partner violence for most of the 

women in this study also highlights the potential to identify safe times for interventions. 

Responding to the complex relationship among childhood sexual molestation, partner violence, 

substance abuse, and employment is especially important today as thousands of families are 

forced to leave welfare rolls because of time limits. A subset of families may fall into extreme 

poverty as a result of the circumstances outlined here and may contribute to an increasing 

population of women and children at risk for further violence and its aftereffects. These complex 

relationships call for cross-system solutions that include health, mental health, substance abuse, 

battered women’s services, criminal justice, and child welfare systems. Increasing demands on 

an already overburdened criminal justice system may risk jeopardizing the well-being of our 

Nation’s most vulnerable families. 

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