DOI: 10.3886/icpsr03002.v1
title: Chicago Women's Health Risk Study, 1995-1998
title: Version 1

description: The goal of the Chicago Women's Health Risk Study (CWHRS)
was to develop a reliable and validated profile of risk factors
directly related to lethal or life-threatening outcomes in intimate
partner violence, for use in agencies and organizations working to
help women in abusive relationships. Data were collected to draw
comparisons between abused women in situations resulting in fatal
outcomes and those without fatal outcomes, as well as a baseline
comparison of abused women and non-abused women, taking into account
the interaction of events, circumstances, and interventions occurring
over the course of a year or two. The CWHRS used a quasi-experimental
design to gather survey data on 705 women at the point of service for
any kind of treatment (related to abuse or not) sought at one of four
medical sites serving populations in areas with high rates of intimate
partner homicide (Chicago Women's Health Center, Cook County Hospital,
Erie Family Health Center, and Roseland Public Health Center). Over
2,600 women were randomly screened in these settings, following strict
protocols for safety and privacy. One goal of the design was that the
sample would not systematically exclude high-risk but understudied
populations, such as expectant mothers, women without regular sources
of health care, and abused women in situations where the abuse is
unknown to helping agencies. To accomplish this, the study used
sensitive contact and interview procedures, developed sensitive
instruments, and worked closely with each sample site. The CWHRS
attempted to interview all women who answered "yes -- within the past
year" to any of the three screening questions, and about 30 percent of
women who did not answer yes, provided that the women were over age 17
and had been in an intimate relationship in the past year. In total,
705 women were interviewed, 497 of whom reported that they had
experienced physical violence or a violent threat at the hands of an
intimate partner in the past year (the abused, or AW, group). The
remaining 208 women formed the comparison group (the non-abused, or
NAW, group). Data from the initial interview sections comprise Parts
1-8. For some women, the AW versus NAW interview status was not the
same as their screening status. When a woman told the interviewer that
she had experienced violence or a violent threat in the past year, she
and the interviewer completed a daily calendar history, including
details of important events and each violent incident that had
occurred the previous year. The study attempted to conduct one or two
follow-up interviews over the following year with the 497 women
categorized as AW. The follow-up rate was 66 percent. Data from this
part of the clinic/hospital sample are found in Parts 9-12. In
addition to the clinic/hospital sample, the CWHRS collected data on
each of the 87 intimate partner homicides occurring in Chicago over a
two-year period that involved at least one woman age 18 or
older. Using the same interview schedule as for the clinic/hospital
sample, CWHRS interviewers conducted personal interviews with one to
three "proxy respondents" per case, people who were knowledgeable and
credible sources of information about the couple and their
relationship, and information was compiled from official or public
records, such as court records, witness statements, and newspaper
accounts (Parts 13-15). In homicides in which a woman was the homicide
offender, attempts were made to contact and interview her. This
"lethal" sample, all such homicides that took place in 1995 or 1996,
was developed from two sources, HOMICIDES IN CHICAGO, 1965-1995 (ICPSR
6399) and the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office. Part 1 includes
demographic variables describing each respondent, such as age, race
and ethnicity, level of education, employment status, screening status
(AW or NAW), birthplace, and marital status. Variables in Part 2
include details about the woman's household, such as whether she was
homeless, the number of people living in the household and details
about each person, the number of her children or other children in the
household, details of any of her children not living in her household,
and any changes in the household structure over the past
year. Variables in Part 3 deal with the woman's physical and mental
health, including pregnancy, and with her social support network and
material resources. Variables in Part 4 provide information on the
number and type of firearms in the household, whether the woman had
experienced power, control, stalking, or harassment at the hands of an
intimate partner in the past year, whether she had experienced
specific types of violence or violent threats at the hands of an
intimate partner in the past year, and whether she had experienced
symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder related to the incidents in
the past month. Variables in Part 5 specify the partner or partners
who were responsible for the incidents in the past year, record the
type and length of the woman's relationship with each of these
partners, and provide detailed information on the one partner she
chose to talk about (called "Name"). Variables in Part 6 probe the
woman's help-seeking and interventions in the past year. Variables in
Part 7 include questions comprising the Campbell Danger Assessment
(Campbell, 1993). Part 8 assembles variables pertaining to the chosen
abusive partner (Name). Part 9, an event-level file, includes the type
and the date of each event the woman discussed in a 12-month
retrospective calendar history. Part 10, an incident-level file,
includes variables describing each violent incident or threat of
violence. There is a unique identifier linking each woman to her set
of events or incidents. Part 11 is a person-level file in which the
incidents in Part 10 have been aggregated into totals for each
woman. Variables in Part 11 include, for example, the total number of
incidents during the year, the number of days before the interview
that the most recent incident had occurred, and the severity of the
most severe incident in the past year. Part 12 is a person-level file
that summarizes incident information from the follow-up interviews,
including the number of abuse incidents from the initial interview to
the last follow-up, the number of days between the initial interview
and the last follow-up, and the maximum severity of any follow-up
incident. Parts 1-12 contain a unique identifier variable that allows
users to link each respondent across files. Parts 13-15 contain data
from official records sources and information supplied by proxies for
victims of intimate partner homicides in 1995 and 1996 in
Chicago. Part 13 contains information about the homicide incidents
from the "lethal sample," along with outcomes of the court cases (if
any) from the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts. Variables
for Part 13 include the number of victims killed in the incident, the
month and year of the incident, the gender, race, and age of both the
victim and offender, who initiated the violence, the severity of any
other violence immediately preceding the death, if leaving the
relationship triggered the final incident, whether either partner was
invading the other's home at the time of the incident, whether
jealousy or infidelity was an issue in the final incident, whether
there was drug or alcohol use noted by witnesses, the predominant
motive of the homicide, location of the homicide, relationship of
victim to offender, type of weapon used, whether the offender
committed suicide after the homicide, whether any criminal charges
were filed, and the type of disposition and length of sentence for
that charge. Parts 14 and 15 contain data collected using the proxy
interview questionnaire (or the interview of the woman offender, if
applicable). The questionnaire used for Part 14 was identical to the
one used in the clinic sample, except for some extra questions about
the homicide incident. The data include only those 76 cases for which
at least one interview was conducted. Most variables in Part 14
pertain to the victim or the offender, regardless of gender (unless
otherwise labeled). For ease of analysis, Part 15 includes the same 76
cases as Part 14, but the variables are organized from the woman's
point of view, regardless of whether she was the victim or offender in
the homicide (for the same-sex cases, Part 15 is from the woman
victim's point of view). Parts 14 and 15 can be linked by ID
number. However, Part 14 includes five sets of variables that were
asked only from the woman's perspective in the original questionnaire:
household composition, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), social
support network, personal income (as opposed to household income), and
help-seeking and intervention. To avoid redundancy, these variables
appear only in Part 14. Other variables in Part 14 cover information
about the person(s) interviewed, the victim's and offender's age, sex,
race/ethnicity, birthplace, employment status at time of death, and
level of education, a scale of the victim's and offender's severity of
physical abuse in the year prior to the death, the length of the
relationship between victim and offender, the number of children
belonging to each partner, whether either partner tried to leave
and/or asked the other to stay away, the reasons why each partner
tried to leave, the longest amount of time each partner stayed away,
whether either or both partners returned to the relationship before
the death, any known physical or emotional problems sustained by
victim or offender, including the four-item Medical Outcomes Study
(MOS) scale of depression, drug and alcohol use of the victim and
offender, number and type of guns in the household of the victim and
offender, Scales of Power and Control (Johnson, 1996) or Stalking and
Harassment (Sheridan, 1992) by either intimate partner in the year
prior to the death, a modified version of the Conflict Tactics Scale
(CTS) (Johnson, 1996) measuring the type of physical violence
experienced by either intimate partner, and the Campbell Danger
Assessment for the victim and offender. In addition, Part 14 contains
a number of summary variables about the fatal incident, most of which
are also in Part 13. These include questions related to the
circumstances of the incident, time, place, witnesses, who had
initiated the violence, outcome for the offender (e.g., suicide or
other death, arrest, sentence, etc.), and outcome for children and
others who witnessed the violence or found the body. Part 15 contains
the same data as Part 14, except that each variable is presented from
the woman's point of view, regardless of whether she was the victim or
offender in the homicide. Additional summary variables were added
regarding the overall nature of any prior physical abuse in the
relationship, as well as the overall pattern of leaving and returning
to the relationship in the year prior to the death.
description: Despite the current proliferation of intimate
 violence studies, domestic violence advocates and policymakers in
 public health and criminal justice are often confused about the
 efficacy of practical interventions. Under what circumstances is a
 woman at risk if she terminates an abusive relationship? In what
 situations does arrest increase or decrease the risk of death? How do
 stalking and other forms of harassment interact with events and
 changing circumstances, such as gun ownership or pregnancy, in
 affecting the risk of a lethal outcome for a victim or offender? The
 Chicago Women's Health Risk Study was conceived to respond to the
 increasing need for information that would be vital to medical, public
 health, and criminal justice agencies, and to domestic violence
 advocates and educators in building public health and public safety
 strategies. To help this array of practitioners identify and
 effectively intervene in potentially life-threatening intimate
 violence situations, the goal of the CWHRS was to develop a reliable
 and validated profile of risk factors directly related to lethal
 outcomes in intimate violence, for use in agencies and organizations
 working to help women in abusive relationships. Data were collected to
 draw comparisons between abused women in situations resulting in fatal
 outcomes and those without fatal outcomes, as well as baseline
 comparisons between abused women and non-abused women, while taking
 into account the interaction of numerous events, circumstances, and
interventions occurring over the course of a year or two.
description: The CWHRS used a quasi-experimental design to
 gather survey data on 705 women at the point of service for any kind
 of treatment (related to abuse or not) sought at one of four medical
 sites serving populations in areas with high rates of intimate partner
 homicide (Chicago Women's Health Center, Cook County Hospital, Erie
 Family Health Center, and Roseland Public Health Center). Over 2,600
 women patients were randomly screened for abuse using a screening
 questionnaire based on the Intimate Violence Screening Tool. The
 screener determined if a woman had a history of physical abuse by an
 intimate partner in the past year and whether she wanted to
 participate in the study. Although the format of the screening
 differed slightly for each site, it always included three questions:
 (1) "Has your intimate partner ever hit, slapped, kicked, or otherwise
 physically hurt or threatened you?" (2) "Has your intimate partner
 ever forced you to engage in sexual activities that made you
 uncomfortable?" and (3) "Are you afraid of your intimate partner?" A
 woman was categorized as "screened AW (abused woman)" if she answered
 positively to any of the three questions and met all of the following
 criteria: the abuse took place within the past year, the abuser was an
 intimate partner (regardless of gender), and the woman answering was
 at least 18 years old. Women answering "no" to all questions who were
 at least 18 years old and who had had an intimate relationship in the
 past year were categorized as "screened NAW (non-abused woman)." From
 the women screened, 705 valid initial interviews were conducted, in
 which supportive and understanding interviewers asked more sensitive
 questions about the violence. After the interview, 497 women were
 categorized as AW (they had experienced violence or a violent threat
 from an intimate partner in the past year), and 208 women were
 categorized as NAW. Data were collected through face-to-face
 interviews conducted during 1997-1998 with the women. To ensure
 anonymity and increase safety and security during the interview
 process, each initial interview took place in a private and secure
 room, behind a closed door, at the hospital, clinic, or health
 center. The interviews, lasting an average of 45 minutes, were
 conducted in both Spanish and English and touched upon details of each
 abusive incident (for the abused women), harassment and stalking,
 social support network, help-seeking and interventions, household
 composition, mental and physical health, pregnancy, and firearm
 availability. The interviewer and each abused woman worked together to
 complete a 12-month retrospective "calendar history," highlighting key
 events and each violent incident that had happened in the woman's life
 during the past year. The data instrument was a set of blank calendars
 printed with one or two months per page. First, the woman was asked to
 place holidays and important life events on the calendar (e.g., having
 a baby, changing jobs, or moving). The woman and the interviewer also
 placed on the calendar each violent incident at the specific day or
 closest approximate day of occurrence. (If a woman told an interviewer
 about a violent incident that was not committed by an intimate
 partner, the incident was recorded in the event calendar dataset.) If
 a woman had been abused by more than one intimate partner in the
 previous year, interviewers recorded each separate incident on the
 calendar. Each woman received ten dollars at the initial interview as
 a thank-you for her participation in the study. Data from the initial
 interview sections comprise Parts 1-8. To collect prospective data on
 each of the 497 women who interviewed as AW, each woman was asked, at
 the end of the initial interview, for her consent to be reinterviewed
 in a series of follow-up interviews. If a woman consented, she was
 asked to provide one or more contacts where she might be
 reached. Researchers conducted at least one follow-up interview with
 approximately 323 of the 497 abused women during 1998 and 1999, via
 personal and telephone interviews. Each respondent was given 20
 dollars for each follow-up interview as a thank-you for her continued
 participation. The follow-up interview schedule was similar to the
 initial interview. In addition to the questionnaire, women who had
 experienced any violence at the hand of an intimate partner since the
 initial interview completed a follow-up calendar history, covering the
 period since the initial interview. At the second follow-up interview,
 women who had experienced any violence completed a follow-up calendar
 history for the period since the first follow-up interview. In
 homicides in which a woman was the homicide offender, attempts were
 made to contact and interview her. Every intimate homicide that
 occurred in Chicago in 1995 or 1996 involving a woman over the age of
 17 was included, regardless of whether further investigation
 determined the homicide to be justified. This "lethal" sample, all
 such homicides that took place in 1995 or 1996, was developed from two
 sources, HOMICIDES IN CHICAGO, 1965-1995 (ICPSR 6399) and the Cook
 County Medical Examiner's Office. The lethal sample contained 87
 homicides, including 57 women victim cases, 28 women offender cases,
 and two same-sex cases. Additional data for the lethal sample were
 collected using official records from the Chicago Police Department
 Murder Analysis Reports, Cook County Criminal Court records, and
 newspaper articles from the Chicago Tribune archive, and the Chicago
 Sun-Times and Chicago Defender microfiche archives (Parts
 13-15). Researchers wanted to locate individuals who could serve as
 knowledgeable and credible proxy respondents about the relationship
 between the victim and the offender in the year prior to the
 homicide. They began with the names and addresses of relatives who had
 identified the body provided from the Medical Examiner files, and the
 names of witnesses provided by the Cook County Criminal Court records,
 and used three primary strategies to develop the proxy contacts.
 First, researchers contacted potential proxies by phone using numbers
 listed in the case files, current telephone books, the HAYNES
 CRISS-CROSS DIRECTORY at the Harold Washington Public Library, and
 Internet directories. Next, they mailed letters to family members
 introducing the study and inviting participation as potential
 proxies. Third, they made field visits to the homicide sites,
 particularly to neighbors of the couple who might provide potential
 proxy contact information. Researchers were able to locate and
 interview at least one proxy respondent for all but 11 of the 87
 homicide cases. It took as many as three proxy interviews (conducted
 face-to-face and via telephone) to compile the information necessary
 to complete a case. Researchers were able to obtain permission from
 the Illinois Department of Corrections to interview women homicide
 offenders still in prison when data collection began. Each of the
 proxy respondents completed, as far as possible, the same
 questionnaire used for the 705 women sampled in the clinic/hospital
settings.
description: Parts 1-12 comprise data from the clinic/hospital
 sample and contain a unique identifier variable that allows users to
 link each respondent across files. Part 1 includes demographic
 variables describing each woman, such as age, race and ethnicity,
 level of education, employment status, screening status (AW or NAW),
 birthplace, and marital status. It also includes information
 (relationship type and length) on the woman's intimate partner, or if
 there was more than one, the partner the woman felt "closest to."
 Variables in Part 2 describe the woman's living arrangements at the
 initial interview and the previous year, including whether she was
 homeless or living in a treatment center or shelter, the number of
 people living in the household, the number of the woman's children
 living in and outside the household, whether the children were the
 woman's birth, adopted, or foster children, the relationship, age, and
 gender of up to ten children (the woman's and others) living in and
 outside the household, and the age, gender, and relationship of up to
 ten adults living in the household. Any changes to the household
 (e.g., someone going to jail or a baby being born) and the dates of
 each change are included as well. Variables in Part 3 deal with the
 respondent's physical and mental health, including general well-being,
 type and duration of any physical or emotional limiting condition,
 amount of bodily pain experienced, pregnancy and pregnancy outcome in
 the past year, alcohol or drug use and treatment, a four-item Medical
 Outcomes Study (MOS) scale of depression (Hays et al., 1995, Stewart
 et al., 1988), a scale of the strength of the woman's social support
 network (acceptance and support, knowledge of and access to resources,
 and tangible help in emergencies), and measures of other resources,
 such as personal and household incomes. Variables in Part 4 provide
 information on the number and type of guns found in the woman's home,
 Scales of Power and Control (Johnson, 1996) or Stalking and Harassment
 (Sheridan, 1992) by any intimate partner in the past year, specific
 types of physical violence or violent threat she might have
 experienced by any intimate partner in the past year (using the CTS as
 modified by Johnson, 1996), and the PTSD Symptom Scale (Foa, et al.,
 1993) measuring Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder related to these
 incidents. Part 5 contains variables from a lengthy section of the
 interview that determined which intimate partner had been responsible
 for the incidents just mentioned (this may not be the partner
 described in Part 1). If more than one partner was responsible for any
 of the incidents, the woman was asked to choose one partner to talk
 about, identified as "Name." Variables in Part 5 record the woman's
 partner situation (e.g., whether the partner mentioned in Part 1 was
 the only abuser, how many partners and how many abusers were
 mentioned), and basic information (type and length of relationship)
 about each partner mentioned in addition to the "closest" partner
 discussed in Part 1. Finally, Part 5 includes a series of variables
 about Name (the chosen abusive partner, or the "closest" partner for
 NAW women), including Name's age, gender, and race or ethnicity, the
 length of the relationship between the woman and Name, the age
 difference between them, Name's employment status and education,
 living arrangements with Name, whether the woman had left or ended the
 relationship, tried to leave, or asked Name to leave or end the
 relationship in the past year, and if so her reasons, whether she or
 Name had returned to the relationship after it ended, and if so her
 reasons, her children with Name and where they were living in the past
 year, and whether she had children who were stepchildren to Name.
 Variables in Part 6 cover the woman's help-seeking and interventions
 in the past year. Women interviewed as NAW (who answered "no" to each
 of the violence or violence threat questions) were not asked these
 questions. Part 6 has detailed sets of questions about informal
 help-seeking (talking to someone about the violence), and about three
 kinds of formal help-seeking (contacting an agency or counselor,
 seeking medical help, and contacting the police). A summary variable
 counts the types of help mentioned. Information on each of these four
 types of help-seeking includes whether the woman had tried to seek
 that type of help, her reasons for doing so, what type of help she
 received, and whether it was helpful. For this public-use version of
 the data the narrative responses have been deleted, but the variables
 with coded responses still remain. Part 6 also includes general
 questions on interventions, such as jail time, probation, orders of
 protection, and types of counseling or treatment involving Name, the
 seriousness of incidents with Name (whether the woman felt her life
 was in danger, whether Name tried to force her to do something
 illegal), and coded summaries of the woman's responses to open-ended
 questions about what she needed but did not get from formal types of
 help, as well as her advice to other women in a similar situation.
 Variables in Part 7 include questions comprising the Campbell Danger
 Assessment (Campbell, 1993), such as whether Name used drugs or
 alcohol, tried to control the woman's daily activities, beat her while
 she was pregnant, or had ever choked or tried to strangle her. In
 addition, Part 7 includes questions about Name's violence outside the
 home, whether Name had ever been arrested, and if so, the type of
 charge(s), and whether the woman had had any other intimate partner
 who was violent toward her. Part 8 is provided to make analysis easier
 for the user. It pulls together all of the information about Name (the
 chosen abusing intimate partner, or for women who interviewed as NAW,
 the closest intimate partner). In addition, Part 8 includes a number
 of summary variables created for analysis. Variables in Part 8 include
 the type and length of relationship with Name, Name's age, gender, and
 racial/ethnic group, age disparity between the woman and Name, Name's
 education and occupation, living arrangements with Name, whether the
 woman left, or tried to leave, or ended the relationship with Name in
 the past year, and if so her reasons, whether she returned to the
 relationship after it ended, and if so her reasons, children with Name
 and where they were living, and her children who were Name's
 stepchildren. Part 9 includes information about the events women
 mentioned in the 12-month retrospective "calendar history," or in
 their response to interview narrative questions. Part 9 is an
 event-level file, with a unique identifier linking each woman to her
 set of events. Part 9 variables include a coded description of the
 event, the date of the event, and for events in which the date spanned
 a period of time, the beginning and ending dates. Violent incidents
 not committed by an intimate partner are included as events in Part
 9. Part 10 contains information about each violent incident or threat
 of violence that the woman mentioned in the 12-month retrospective
 calendar history. Part 10 is an incident-level file, with a unique
 identifier linking each woman to her set of incidents. Variables in
 Part 10 include two aggregate summaries of the number and maximum
 severity of the incidents over the past year (see Part 11), as well as
 information on each incident. Variables include the severity code,
 date, whether a weapon was involved, whether there were other people
 present, and if so, who, if anyone else was injured, whether the woman
 suffered a miscarriage as a result of the incident, whether the woman
 was restrained or tied down in the incident, whether Name tried to
 choke or strangle her, whether the woman or Name were using drugs or
 alcohol at the time of the incident, and the number of days between
 the incident and the interview. Part 11 consists of aggregate
 person-level variables created from the incidents in Part
 10. Variables for Part 11 record the total number of incidents during
 the year, the number of days before the initial interview that the
 most recent incident occurred, the maximum severity of any incident in
 the past year, the total number of incidents coded under each category
 of severity, the number of incidents involving a weapon, a gun, or a
 knife, the number of incidents resulting in miscarriage, the number of
 incidents in which the woman was restrained or tied down, the number
 of incidents in which other people, including children, were present,
 the number of incidents in which the woman had used alcohol or drugs,
 the number of incidents in which Name had used alcohol or drugs, and
 the number of incidents in which both had used alcohol or drugs. Part
 12 is a person-level file containing variables summarizing violent
 incidents at the hands of any intimate partner (Name or any other
 intimate partner) the woman experienced on follow-up. Variables in
 Part 12 include the dates of each follow-up interview, the number of
 days from the initial interview to each follow-up and the total number
 of follow-up days, whether there had been any violent incidents since
 the last interview, the total number of violent incidents during the
 follow-up period, the maximum severity of the incidents at each
 follow-up and overall, and the status of the follow-up (including
 whether the woman consented or had died). Parts 13-15 contain data
 from official records sources and information supplied by proxies for
 victims of intimate partner homicides in 1995 and 1996 in
 Chicago. Part 13 contains information about the homicide incidents
 from the "lethal sample," along with outcomes of the court cases (if
 any) from the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts. Variables
 for Part 13 include the number of victims killed in the incident, the
 month and year of the incident, the gender, race, and age of both the
 victim and offender, who initiated the violence, the severity of any
 other violence immediately preceding the death, whether leaving the
 relationship triggered the final incident, whether either partner was
 invading the other's home at the time of the incident, whether
 jealousy or infidelity was an issue in the final incident, whether
 there was drug or alcohol use noted by witnesses, the predominant
 motive of the homicide, location of the homicide, relationship of
 victim to offender, type of weapon used, whether the offender
 committed suicide after the homicide, whether any criminal charges
 were filed, and the type of disposition and length of sentence for
 that charge. Parts 14 and 15 contain data collected using the proxy
 interview questionnaire (or the interview of the woman offender, if
 applicable). The questionnaire used for Part 14 was identical to the
 one used in the clinic sample, except for some extra questions about
 the homicide incident. The data include only those 76 cases for which
 at least one interview was conducted. Most variables in Part 14
 pertain to the victim or the offender, regardless of gender (unless
 otherwise labeled). For ease of analysis, Part 15 includes the same 76
 cases as Part 14, but the variables are organized from the woman's
 point of view, regardless of whether she was the victim or offender in
 the homicide (for the same-sex cases, Part 15 is from the woman
 victim's point of view). Parts 14 and 15 can be linked by ID
 number. However, Part 14 includes five sets of variables that were
 asked only from the woman's perspective in the original questionnaire:
 household composition, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), social
 support network, personal income (as opposed to household income), and
 help-seeking and intervention. To avoid redundancy, these variables
 appear only in Part 14. Other variables in Part 14 cover information
 about the person(s) interviewed, the victim's and offender's age, sex,
 race/ethnicity, birthplace, employment status at time of death, and
 level of education, a scale of the victim's and offender's severity of
 physical abuse in the year prior to the death, the length of the
 relationship between victim and offender, the number of children
 belonging to each partner, whether either partner tried to leave
 and/or asked the other to stay away, the reasons why each partner
 tried to leave, the longest amount of time each partner stayed away,
 whether either or both partners returned to the relationship before
 the death, any known physical or emotional problems sustained by the
 victim or offender, including the MOS scale of depression, drug and
 alcohol use of the victim and offender, number and type of guns in the
 household of the victim and offender, Scales of Power and Control
 (Johnson, 1996) or Stalking and Harassment (Sheridan, 1992) by either
 intimate partner in the year prior to the death, a modified version of
 the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS) (Johnson, 1996) measuring the type of
 physical violence experienced by either intimate partner, and the
 Campbell Danger Assessment for the victim and offender. In addition,
 Part 14 contains a number of summary variables about the fatal
 incident, most of which are also in Part 13. These include questions
 related to the circumstances of the incident, time, place, witnesses,
 who had initiated the violence, outcome for the offender (e.g.,
 suicide or other death, arrest, sentence, etc.), and outcome for
 children and others who witnessed the violence or found the body. Part
 15 contains the same data as Part 14, except that each variable is
 presented from the woman's point of view, regardless of whether she
 was the victim or offender in the homicide. Additional summary
 variables were added regarding the overall nature of any prior
 physical abuse in the relationship, as well as the overall pattern of
 leaving and returning to the relationship in the year prior to the
death.
description: Response Rates: The response rate for Part 12 (Summary of Abuse
 on Follow-up Data) was 65 percent. Response rates for Parts 1-11 and
Parts 13-15 are not applicable.
description: Presence of Common Scales: Several Likert-type scales were used as well as the
 Medical Outcomes Study (MOS) scale of depression (Hays et al., 1995,
 Stewart et al., 1988), Scales of Power and Control (Johnson, 1996) and
 Stalking and Harassment (Sheridan, 1992), a modified version of the
 Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS) (Johnson, 1996), the Post-Traumatic
 Stress Disorder (PTSD) Symptom Scale (Foa et al., 1993), and the
Campbell Danger Assessment (Campbell, 1993).
description: Convenience and random sampling.
description: Datasets: 
DS0: Study-Level Files
DS1: Questionnaire Sections B and C, Clinic/Hospital Initial Interview Data
DS2: Questionnaire Section D, Clinic/Hospital Initial Interview Data
DS3: Questionnaire Sections E and F, Clinic/Hospital Initial Interview Data
DS4: Questionnaire Sections G Through K, Clinic/Hospital Initial Interview Data
DS5: Questionnaire Section L, Clinic/Hospital Initial Interview Data
DS6: Questionnaire Section M, Clinic/Hospital Initial Interview Data
DS7: Questionnaire Section N, Clinic/Hospital Initial Interview Data
DS8: Primary Intimate Partner Data
DS9: Event Calendar Data
DS10: Abuse Calendar Data
DS11: Aggregate Abuse Calendar Data
DS12: Summary of Abuse on Follow-Up Data
DS13: Official Records for the Proxy Interview Data
DS14: Proxy Interview Data
DS15: Restructured Proxy Interview Data
description: Parts 1-7: Non-abused and abused women living in Chicago,
IL. Parts 8-12: Abused women living in Chicago, IL. Parts 13-15:
Intimate partner homicide cases in Chicago, IL, in 1995-1996.
description: The user guide, codebooks, and data collection
instruments are provided by ICPSR as two 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.