Mental health counselling for abused women were used in evaluating the intervention from the perspective of the abused women attending the session(s). In measuring the quality of care of dif- ferent aspects of service provided at the pre-arrival and arrival stages, the interaction with the provider and the outcomes of the service were taken into ac- count. Although transport was arranged for attend- ing the first counselling session, there were likely many remaining obstacles to participating in the programme, such as inconvenient days and hours, indirect costs, workload, and restrictions on mobili- ty. In the evaluation, the women were asked about barriers to attending the session. Literature shows that both waiting-time and dura- tion of session affect satisfaction with the service (32). For this reason, waiting-time, the total dura- tion of the session, and how these were perceived by women were included in the assessment of quality of service. Since maintainance of ethical standards in delivering services concerning such a sensitive issue as violence was of utmost impor- tance, special attention was paid in the evaluation to maintenance of confidentiality and privacy. The performance of the paramedics was measured by their attitude towards the women, non-judgement- al nature of their interaction, equal treatment, and ability to understand the woman’s story and situ- ation. For long-term counselling care, the final outcome criteria and evaluation might centre on ending abuse. For relatively short-term care criteria for suc- cessful outcome would be making the victim recog- nize that she is not to be blamed for violence, mak- ing her aware of her strengths and coping skills, and helping her to establish or re-establish social networks. In the case of the current programme, the overwhelming majority (97%) of the clients at- tended only one session. So, it can be assumed that not all these indicators for short-term care would be appropriate for measuring the success of the cur- rent intervention. Thus, the final outcome of the session was measured in terms of satisfaction of the participants with different aspects of the session and a global evaluation of its usefulness and also in terms of reasons for not coming for a second ses- sion. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were used for evaluating the service. In-depth in- terviews to assess the service were carried out with 30 participants in counselling session during Au- gust 2006. Purposive sampling method was used for selecting the women for in-depth interviews. As 480 Naved RT et al. there were funding constraints and the number of women who would participate in the programme was unknown, women residing closest to the ICDDR,B hospital were approached first, and then women living farther were approached as long as the funds allowed. Trained female interviewers with master’s degree in anthropology and sociolo- gy conducted the interviews. Consent was sought for tape-recording the interview. The interviewers transcribed the data. A code list was prepared based on a list of general themes, which was modified in the process of coding for allowing new understand- ing and subthemes to emerge from the analysis of transcripts. Two data collectors coded data using the Atlas/ti software. The data were retrieved by codes, and search was performed for patterns and ideas for explaining those patterns in the data. In-depth interviews were followed up by a survey conducted during June-August 2007. In-depth in- terviews were conducted for achieving a detailed understanding of how the abused women assessed the intervention. Data from these in-depth inter- views helped develop the questionnaire for the survey. The qualitative data were also useful in formulating the questions in an appropriate lan- guage using appropriate terms. They helped inter- pret the quantitative results as well. The survey was conducted to assess the intervention that is gener- alizable across programme participants. It was in- tended to include all the women who attended the sessions. The final sample obtained for the survey was 372 (Table 1). The women lost to follow-up were mainly due to migration or long-term absence from households. Background characteristics of the women lost to follow-up were not differerent from the women covered by the survey. As shown by MINIMat data, they also did not differ from the obtained sample in terms of exposure to physical and/or sexual violence. Table 1. Distribution of target sample (n=410) Status of target sample in terms of coverage Not found Household was not found Absence from household for a long time There was nobody in the household Dead/deaf All completed Total Percentage 0.5 7.1 1.2 0.5 90.7 100 JHPN