Study 1
Stevens and colleagues (2015) conducted a randomized controlled trial that compared the efficacy of Telephone Support Services (TSS) with enhanced usual care (EUC) for female victims of intimate partner violence (IPV). The study was conducted with English-speaking women who self-reported IPV victimization in the past year while in a midwestern pediatric emergency department (ED) between September 2008 and July 2010. The ED used computerized screenings for IPV. If a respondent endorsed IPV, an ED social worker was immediately paged via text to provide standard-of-care assessment and referral assistance.
Women were eligible for the trial if they met the following five criteria: 1) they reported IPV victimization within the past year through the computerized safety screening or through routine conversations with ED staff; 2) they resided in the county where the ED was located; 3) they had at least partial custody of the pediatric ED patient; 4) they were seen in the ED during shifts when a research assistant was available, to explain the study and obtain consent for participation; and 5) they had the opportunity to learn about the study in a private and safe fashion (e.g., it was easy to separate the women from a possible perpetrator while in the ED). The study was described to the women, and consent procedures were followed while still in the ED. Those who agreed to participate were contacted at home and asked to complete a baseline assessment.
A total of 253 women completed the baseline assessment, after which 129 were assigned to the TSS condition, and 124 were assigned to the EUC control condition. Initial phone calls to both groups began with questions about the child’s recent visit to the ED and follow up on any non-IPV injury concerns that the woman had endorsed through the computerized safety screening. At this point, the interventionist who had called the comparison group concluded the call; further calls were made only to seek updated contact information for follow-up assessments. However, the initial call continued for the treatment group, with participants beginning to receive the five advocacy phases of the TSS program. TSS participants completed on average 4.7 calls for a total duration of 81.1 minutes.
The TSS participants were all female, with an average age of 28.8 years. The participants were 46.5 percent white, 45 percent African American, 1.6 percent Hispanic, 1.6 percent Asian American, and 5.4 percent were multiracial or from other racial or ethnic groups. A total of 55 percent of the TSS participants were single, 81 percent had Medicaid or public insurance, and the average age of their child was 5.1 years old. The comparison group participants were also all female, with an average age of 29.5 years. The control participants were 51.6 percent African American, 37.1 percent white, 1.6 percent Hispanic, 0.8 percent Asian American, and 8.9 percent were multiracial or from other racial or ethnic groups. A total of 60.3 percent of the EUC group was single, 80.2 percent had Medicaid or public insurance, and the average age of their child was 6.4 years. There were no statistically significant differences between the two groups on the demographic variables. At baseline, the two groups also did not differ on any clinical variables (e.g., total depression or PTSD score) or abuse variables (e.g., total composite abuse scale, women’s experience with battering, relationship status or cohabitation with the person who perpetrates the abuse) except that those in the TSS group were more likely to have experienced police involvement for IPV victimization by the individual than those in the EUC group.
IPV was measured at baseline, at 3 months (the midpoint of the intervention), and at 6 months (at the end of the intervention) using two measures: 1) the Composite Abuse Scale (Hegarty et al. 2005), which is a 30-item measure that assessed physical, sexual, and emotional IPV victimization, for which scores of 7 or higher denoted IPV exposure; and 2) the Women’s Experience with Battering Scale (Smith et al. 1995), which is a 10-item measure that assessed chronic feelings of vulnerability to a person. Two mental health measures were also used: 1) The Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (Radloff, 1977), a 20-item scale; and 2) The Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist (Blanchard et al. 1996), a 17-item scale.
The study authors conducted a pre-post design comparing the intervention and control groups on the 6-month variables, using baseline measures for each variable as covariates. T-tests and Chi-Squares were used to detect differences in means. Dosage subgroup analyses were conducted.