Keywords

abuse, intervention, randomized clinical trial, safety, women

 

Authors

  1. McFarlane, Judith
  2. Malecha, Ann
  3. Gist, Julia
  4. Watson, Kathy
  5. Batten, Elizabeth
  6. Hall, Iva
  7. Smith, Sheila

Abstract

Background: Although intimate partner violence is recognized as a major threat to women's health, few interventions have been developed or tested.

 

Objective: To test an intervention administered to abused women in order to increase safety-seeking behaviors.

 

Method: A two-group clinical trial randomized 75 abused women to receive six telephone intervention sessions on safety behaviors. A control group of 75 women received standard care. Women in both groups were re-interviewed at 3 months and 6 months post-initial measurement.

 

Results: Using repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA), we found significantly [F (2,146) 5.11, p = .007] more adopted safety behaviors reported by women in the intervention group than by women in the control group at both the 3-month [F (91,74) = 19.70, p < .001] and 6-month [F (1,74) = 15.90, p < .001] interviews. The effect size (ES) of the intervention was large at 3 months (ES = 1.5) and remained substantial at 6 months (ES = 0.56).

 

Discussion: These findings demonstrate that an intervention to increase safety behaviors of abused women is highly effective when offered following an abusive incident and remains effective for 6 months.