Culturally-Focused Batterer Counseling for African-American

Project Summary for 2001-WT-BX-0003 The purpose of this research is to test the relative effectiveness of culturally-focused batterer counseling for African-American men as well as compared to conventional batterer counseling. Recent program evaluations show that African-American are more likely to drop out of conventional batterer couseling and reassault their partners, and the clinical literature in related fields recommends culturally-focused counseling refers to the counselor recognizing and responding to cultural issues facing a particular group of participants. The researcher hypothesize that: 1) African-American men assigned to cultrally-focused batterer counseling will have lower dropout, reassault, and rearrest rates than men assigned to conventional counseling in both an African-American-only group and a racially-mixed group; 2)improved outcomes for cultrally-focused counseling over conventional counseling will persist for programs completers over program dropouts, in what is considered a "dose-response" as opposed to "intention-to-treat" design; and 3) men with more cultrally-specific attitudes will benefit the most from the cultrally-focused counseling-- that is, cultrally-specific attitudes will moderate the counseling outcomes.