DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03542
title: Evaluating a Collaborative Intervention Between Health Care and Criminal Justice in Harris County, Texas, 2001-2002
title: Archival Version

description: This study sought to evaluate the Advocacy-Case Management
 Intervention designed to increase victim safety and the efficiency of
 the protection order process. The intervention was performed by
 registered nurses as part of a collaborative partnership between
 justice and health care agencies. A two-group experimental design
 using random assignments to control and experimental groups was
 used. The study subjects were women who qualified for a civil
 protection order against a sexual intimate. These women were contacted
 via telephone for initial interviews, as well as for three-, six-,
 12-, and 18-month follow-up interviews. Variables were obtained from
 several instruments used to measure victim safety-seeking behaviors
and levels of violence and harassment.
description: Violence against women largely involves intimate
 partners, such as husbands, boyfriends, and dates. The urgency and
 magnitude of the problem of intimate partner violence have caused
 service providers, policy-makers, and advocates to implement treatment
 and intervention programs in the absence of scientific evidence. The
 rush to do something has resulted in a broad array of interventions,
 many with origins in local and national advocacy efforts, such as
 shelters and social support programs. These interventions remain
 mostly undocumented and unanalyzed in the research literature. Abused
 women often turn to the justice system for protection, preferring to
 file for protection orders rather than filing assault charges against
 their abusers. Several studies have demonstrated that intimate partner
 violence decreases after a woman receives a protection order. The
 purpose of this study was to evaluate the Advocacy-Case Management
 Intervention designed to increase victim safety and increase the
 efficiency of the protection order process. The intervention was
 performed by registered nurses as part of a collaborative partnership
between justice and health care agencies.
description: A two-group experimental design with an
 intervention using random assignments to control and experimental
 groups was used. The study subjects were women who qualified for a
 civil protection order against a sexual intimate. Women randomized to
 the control group were offered standard services of the specialized
 district attorney's (DA) office, which consisted of individual
 counseling and community referral information on violence. All
 applicants were routinely given the name and phone number of their
 intake interviewer and encouraged to telephone the DA's office for
 further assistance. Following routine DA procedures, control group
 women were offered a card with contact information and appointment
 times for the three-, six-, 12-, and 18-month interviews. Women were
 compensated for each interview. Women randomized to the intervention
 group were offered the standard services of the DA's office plus six
 advocacy case management intervention telephone calls. The advocacy
 case management intervention was comprised of two parts. The first
 part consisted of six telephone contacts with the victim. The first
 intervention phone call occurred within 48 to 72 hours of the
 protection order application by the victim. The victim was recontacted
 at one, two, three, five, and eight weeks thereafter. The focus of
 each call was on victim safety. Each call began with the safety
 behavior checklist, noting behaviors adopted since the last
 contact. During each phone call, the advocate offered suggestions and
 strategies for adopting safety behavior. The advocate also offered
 educational information and tailored referral sources to each woman's
 unique situation. During each of the six planned advocacy phone
 contacts, the victim was offered a status update on any missing
 information from her protection order application. The advocate
 advised the woman on securing needed pieces of information, such as
 divorce or paternity decrees, medical records, or certified birth
 certificates. The advocate supported, encouraged, and complimented the
 woman's efforts toward completion of her protection order file. The
 telephone calls ranged in duration from three minutes to 25 minutes,
 with a average of nine minutes per call. The telephone calls stopped
 eight weeks after application for the protection order. The second
 part of the advocacy case management intervention entailed the
 advocate checking the progress of protection orders for women in the
 intervention group. Appropriate offices were called to ascertain
 whether essential papers had been received and how many attempts had
 been made to serve legal papers to the abuser. All female applicants
 who qualified for a protection order against a sexual intimate, and
 who spoke English or Spanish, were invited to participate in the
 study. All but one of the women completed the three-, six-, 12-, and
 18-month follow-up interviews and were compensated monetarily for
 their participation in each separate interview. Each interview used
 six different instruments to measure the victim's safety-seeking
 behavior, levels of experienced violence, physical and emotional
 functioning, and employment productivity. First, a 15-item safety
 survey was administered to assess for present use of safety behaviors
 and chart future adoption. At the first assessment, the woman was
 asked "Have you ever ...?" At subsequent sessions, the women were
 asked "Since the last time we talked, have you ...? The second
 instrument, Severity of Violence Against Women Scale, was a 46-item
 questionnaire designed to measure threats of physical violence (19
 items) and actual physical trauma (27 items). For each behavior, the
 woman responded using a four-point scale to indicate how often the
 behavior occurred. The next instrument was a Stalking Victimization
 Survey (SVS), an 18-item yes/no questionnaire. Eight items were
 developed by Tjaden and Thoennes (1998) as part of the VIOLENCE AND
 THREATS OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IN AMERICA SURVEY [VIOLENCE AND
 THREATS OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND MEN IN THE UNITED STATES,
 1994-1996 (ICPSR 2566)]. Examples of items included were: being
 followed or spied on, receiving unsolicited letters or written
 correspondence, or finding the perpetrator standing outside the
 victim's home, school, or workplace. The SVS also included ten items
 from the Sheridan (1998) HARASS instrument. The fourth instrument,
 Danger Assessment Scale, was a 15-item questionnaire with a yes/no
 response format designed to assist women in determining their
 potential risk for becoming a homicide victim. All items referred to
 risk factors that had been associated with murder in situations
 involving abuse. The fifth instrument used was the Medical Outcomes
 Study Short Form (MOS SF-12) Health Survey, a shorter version of the
 SF-36 survey, which was used to assess health status across physical
 and emotional domains. The last instrument used dealt with work site
harassment.
description: Variables consisted of items taken from a safety
 behavior checklist that asked victims if they hid money, extra house
 and car keys, or a bag with extra clothing, established a secret code
 with family and friends, asked neighbors to call the police if
 violence began, or removed weapons. Additional items indicated
 whether the victim had the following readily available: Social
 Security numbers for herself, the perpetrator, and her children, rent
 and utility receipts, birth certificates for herself and her children,
 an identification card or driver's license, bank account numbers,
 insurance policies and numbers (medical, auto, life, or house), a
 marriage license, valuable jewelry, and important phone numbers. A
 severity of violence-against-women-scale instrument was used to
 determine the frequency with which the abuser threw an object, or
 threatened to destroy property, hurt someone, kill himself, or kill
 the victim, and the frequency with which the abuser pulled, spanked,
 bit, grabbed, choked, punched, burned, or raped the victim. A stalking
 survey captured behaviors such as whether the abuser followed the
 victim, sent unsolicited letters, stood outside the victim's home or
 workplace, killed the victim's pet, or threatened the victim's family
 and friends. A danger scale instrument captured whether physical
 violence increased in frequency or severity and whether there were
 drugs or firearms in the home. Victims were asked whether their health
 limited them in moderate activities, and whether they felt calm,
 down-hearted, or had energy. Victims were also asked a series of
 questions about harassment in the workplace. Demographic variables
 include age, level of education, race, ethnicity, and income of victim
and abuser.
description: Response Rates: The response rates for the follow-up interviews
were not available.
description: Presence of Common Scales: The following scales were used for this study: Severity
 of Violence Against Women Scale (Marshall, 1992), Medical Outcomes
 Study Health Survey, Short Form-12 (MOS SF-12) (Ware, 1993), Stalking
 and Harassment (Sheridan, 1992), and Campbell Danger Assessment
(Campbell, 1993).
description: The sample for this study consisted of all women, 18 years
 or older, applying and qualifying for a protection order against a
 sexual intimate. At the agency where this study was completed,
 criteria for qualification for a protection order included (1) being a
 victim of family violence, (2) a likelihood that family violence would
 occur again in the future, and (3) a current or former intimate
 relationship that included cohabiting or being the biological parents
 of the same child. Women were informed at the time of application at
 the district attorney's office whether they qualified for a protection
 order. Only qualifying applicants were invited to participate in the
 study. Other sample criteria included the requirement that the woman
 speak either English or Spanish. A two-group randomized control design
 was followed. Sampling with randomization to treatment or control
 groups continued for 28 days until 75 women were entered into the
 control group and 75 women were entered into the treatment group. A
 total of 154 women qualified for the study and were invited to
 participate. Four women refused to participate. The primary reason
 given for refusal to enter the study was pain from physical
 injuries. One woman committed suicide three weeks into the study. All
 remaining 149 women completed the three-, six-, 12-, and 18-month
follow-up interviews.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: Evaluating a Collaborative Intervention Between Health Care and Criminal Justice in Harris County, Texas, 2001-2002
description: All female applicants qualifying for a protection order
against a sexual intimate partner living in Harris County, Texas.
description: The user guide, codebook, and data collection
 instruments are provided by ICPSR as Portable Document Format (PDF)
 files. The PDF file format was developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated
 and can be accessed using PDF reader software, such as the Adobe
 Acrobat Reader. Information on how to obtain a copy of the Acrobat
Reader is provided on the ICPSR Web site.