Intimate Partner Violence and Custody Decisions: A Randomized Controlled Trial of Outcomes from Family Court, Shuttle Mediation, or Videoconferencing Mediation

The proposed study is a randomized control trial of family mediation cases with intimate partner violence. If the parties agree to study participation, these cases will be randomly assigned to one of three study conditions: traditional court based litigation, shuttle mediation, or videoconferencing mediation. An IPV screen, administered at mediation intake, will be used to examine IPV level and determine study eligibility. It is estimated that there will be 75 mediation cases per study condition. The study will be conducted at a metropolitan court within a dispute resolution division. Immediate outcome measures include: 1) data coded from divorce decrees and mediation agreements, regarding resolution of disputed issues; 2) party self-reports of satisfaction and perceptions of process and outcomes; and 3) for mediation cases, mediators report regarding process and outcome. One-year outcomes, coded from court records, include: 1) number and nature of legal motions filed; and 2) evidence of continuing IPV. Demographic information will be gathered to describe the sample, determine if randomization was successful, and predict outcomes. A follow-up survey will be sent to all participants to examine continuation of IPV, self-reported outcomes, and self-reported satisfaction with mediation method. For exploratory purposes, court records for cases that refuse study participation will be coded, providing a non-randomized court comparison sample. After conducting measurement models of IPV and outcome variables to create theory- and statistically-based latent measures of constructs from multiple measures, data analyses will be conducted to test analyses. Cost-benefit analyses will be conducted. ca/ncf