RISK ASSESSMENT AND INTIMATE
PARTNER VIOLENCE:
BRIDGING RESEARCH AND PRACTICE
WEBINAR FOR THE BATTERED WOMEN’S JUSTICE PROJECT
MAY 18, 2011
Lauren Bennett Cattaneo, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, George Mason University
My overarching perspective


As a researcher
On the field of intimate partner violence
Why risk assessment?




Limitations on resources
Need for appropriate response
Time-limited nature of contact with potential victims
Relevance across multiple contexts

Need to connect research to practice
Overview of presentation

3 areas of research on risk assessment in IPV
 Key
findings
 Key gaps

Where to go from here
Sources of information about IPV risk
VICTIM
INSTRUMENTS
PROFESSIONAL
RISK
ASSESSMENT
What we do and don’t know about risk
assessment instruments
INSTRUMENTS
RISK
ASSESSMENT
KEY FINDINGS: INSTRUMENTS PREDICT MODERATELY
WELL – BETTER THAN CHANCE.
Goodman, Dutton & Bennett (2000)
Roehl and colleagues (2005)
Yang, Wong & Coid (2010)
What we do and don’t know about risk
assessment instruments
KEY GAPS IN OUR KNOWLEDGE:
•Studies over-rely on official reports of repeat violence as opposed
to victim reports (Bennett Cattaneo & Goodman, 2005 review).
•Focus on prediction is of limited relevance to practice:
•Quantifying risk does not tell you what a specific person will do.
•Focus of practice is prevention, not prediction.
•Are instruments helpful to victims? To practitioners?
•How can we integrate prediction into risk management?
What we do and don’t know about victims’
assessment of their own risk
VICTIM
RISK
ASSESSMENT
KEY FINDINGS



Victims assess their own risk all the time.
Victim assessments add above and beyond risk
factors and risk assessment instruments in predicting
future violence (Bennett Cattaneo & Goodman,
2003; Bennett, Goodman & Dutton, 2000; Weisz,
Tolman & Saunders, 2000; Heckert & Gondolf,
2004).
Victims do not exhibit any consistent type of bias in
their predictions, and are moderately accurate.
Method





246 women seeking help for IPV at shelter, civil or
criminal court
5 follow-up interviews over 18 months
At intake measured assessment of risk & all predictors.
At 18 months asked if risks were realized
Two questions:
1.
2.
How accurate are participants in predicting repeat
abuse?
What predicts level of accuracy?
Q 1: No pessimistic or optimistic bias, and
more likely to be right than wrong
Re-abused
Risk Perceived
NO
YES
LOW
Correct Reject
Miss
HIGH
False Alarm
Hit
Bennett Cattaneo, Bell, Goodman & Dutton, 2007; Bell, Bennett Cattaneo, Goodman & Dutton,
2007
KEY GAPS




What is the nature of risk assessment among IPV
survivors who do not seek help?
How can we best include victim expertise in
assessments of risk of physical abuse?
How are their perceptions influenced by input from
other sources? Over time?
How can we best include victim conceptions of risk
that are broader than physical abuse? (Davies, Lyon
& Monti-Catania, 1998)
What we do and don’t know about
professional assessments of risk
PROFESSIONAL
RISK
ASSESSMENT
KEY FINDINGS
•The problem of expert judgment (Westen & Weinberger, 2004)
• No evidence they add to predictive accuracy of instruments
(Williams & Houghton, 2004)
• Comparable to victims, but draw on different information
Bennett Cattaneo (2007) Method


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169 women who presented at court following arrest
of current or former partner
5 victim advocates who interviewed them to assist in
criminal case, to identify needs and to conduct
safety planning
Both victims and advocates rated the likelihood of
continued abuse of any kind on scale of 1-10
Follow-up with participants three months later
Bennett Cattaneo (2007) findings



Assessments of both victims and advocates were moderately
correlated with continued abuse, but different factors
influenced their risk assessments.
Victims: more symptoms of PTSD; batterer more generally
violent; not living with the batterer at the time of the
offense; higher level of psychological abuse.
Advocates: greater level of drug use by the batterer; victim
and the batterer had children in common; greater levels of
physical violence and psychological abuse.
What we do and don’t know about
professional assessments of risk
PROFESSIONAL
RISK
ASSESSMENT
KEY FINDINGS (2)
•The problem of expert judgment (Westen & Weinberger, 2004)
• No evidence they add to predictive accuracy of instruments
• Comparable to victims, but draw on different information
• The practice landscape is not well understood
Method & Results
Bennett Cattaneo & Chapman (in press)
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Interviewed 13 local practitioners about risk
assessment practices
Very few participants used any standardized
approach
Many expected structure would be disempowering
Almost no information about what victims gained
about risk assessment practices
KEY GAPS

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
Is it true that more structure is disempowering?
How do professional assessments of risk affect
victim thinking? Behavior?
How can professional expertise best be integrated
into the risk management process?
Where we go from here 1
Risk prediction versus management
Much research that is not practice-applicable (Bennett
Cattaneo & Goodman, 2007)
 Need to shift focus from prediction to management:
What are the chances violence will occur?
versus
Under what circumstances might violence occur, and how
might we change them?
 Need to identify dynamic causal factors of violence

Where we go from here 2
How should we use instruments?




We have learned that HOW matters as much (or
more) than WHAT
How do our assessments, and the way we conduct
those assessments, influence ONGOING victim
decision making?
Viewing our contributions as one stop on a long
journey
Need to develop best practices that pulls prediction into
management, and gives victim voice
Where we go from here 3
How can we be survivor-centered & use our expertise?





Moving back toward survivor-centered practice
Risk assessment has little connection to what is offered
the victim, or to what we know is helpful
Don’t want to throw out baby with bathwater
Need to develop best practices that pulls prediction into
management, gives victim voice, and integrates
advocate expertise.
Need to innovate and evaluate with these outcomes in
mind.
Empowerment process model
Bennett Cattaneo & Chapman (2010)
Define or redefine meaningful, poweroriented GOALS and objectives
Selfefficacy
Observe and
reflect on
IMPACT of
actions in
relation to
goal
achievement
knowledge
competence
Carry out
ACTIONS
toward goal
achievement
References
Bennett, L., Goodman, L., & Dutton, M.A. (2000). Risk assessment among batterers arrested for
domestic assault: The salience of psychological abuse. Violence against Women, 16(11), 1190-1203.
Bennett Cattaneo, L. (2007). Contributors to assessments of risk in intimate partner violence: How
victims and professionals differ. Journal of Community Psychology, 35(1), 57-75.
Bennett Cattaneo, L., Bell, M.E., Goodman, L.A. & Dutton, M.A. (2007). Intimate partner violence
victims’ accuracy in assessing their risk of re-abuse. Journal of Family Violence, 22(6), 429-440.
Bennett Cattaneo, L. & *Chapman, A.R. (in press). Risk assessment with victims of intimate partner
violence: Investigating the gap between research and practice. Violence Against Women.
Bennett Cattaneo & *Chapman, A.R. (2010). The process of empowerment: A model for use in
research and practice. American Psychologist, 65(7), 646-659.
Bennett Cattaneo, L. & Goodman, L.A. (2009). New directions in IPV risk assessment: An
empowerment approach to risk management. (Reprinted book chapter). Family and Intimate Partner Violence
Quarterly, 18, 55-72.
Bennett Cattaneo, L. and Goodman, L.A. (2005). Risk factors for reabuse in intimate partner violence:
A cross-disciplinary critical review. Trauma, Violence and Abuse: A Review Journal, 6, 141-175.
Bennett Cattaneo, L. and Goodman, L.A. (2003). Victim-reported risk factors for continued abusive
behavior: Assessing the dangerousness of arrested batterers. Journal of Community Psychology, 31(4), 1-21.
References (2)
Davies, Lyon and Monti-Catania (1998) Safety planning with battered women: Complex lives, difficult
choices. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Goodman, L.A., Dutton, M.A., & Bennett, L. (2000). Predicting repeat abuse among arrested
batterers: Use of the Danger Assessment Scale in the Criminal Justice System. Journal of Interpersonal
Violence, 15, 1, 63-72.
Heckert, D.A. & Gondolf, E.D. (2004). Battered women’s perception of risk versus risk factors and
instruments in predicting repeat reassault. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 19, 778-800.
Roehl, J., O’Sullivan, C., Webster, D., & Campbell, J. (2005). Intimate partner violence risk
assessment validation study, final report (Document No. 209731). Washington DC: National Institute of Justice.
Weisz, A. N., Tolman, R. M. & Saunders, D. G. (2000). Assessing the risk of severe violence: The
importance of survivors’ predictions. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 15, 75-90.
Westen, D. & Weinberger, J. (2004). When clinical description becomes statistical prediction.
American Psychologist, 59(7) 595-613.
Williams, K.R. & Houghton, A.B. (2004). Assessing the risk of domestic violence reoffending: A
validation study. Law and Human Behavior, 28(4), 437-455.
Yang, M., Wong, S.C. & Coid, J. (2010). The efficacy of violence prediction: A meta-analytic
comparison of nie risk assessment tools. Psychological Bulletin, 136(5), 740-767.