Domestic Violence in the Lives of Children: The Future of Research, Intervention, and Social Policy

• NCJ Number: 190013
• Date Published: 2001
• Length: 343 pages
• Grant Number(s): 1998-WT-VX-0026
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Best Practice/State-of-the-Art Review

Annotation

This collection of 13 studies examines the state of the art of research on the impact of domestic violence between adults on the lives of children, the adequacy of intervention programs and their evaluations, and policy implications that flow from this research.

Abstract

The first section examines future research and policy needs. Individual chapters focus on issues and controversies in documenting the incidence and prevalence of children’s exposure to domestic violence, ways in which a child’s development can be affected, ways of defining and assessing resiliency in children exposed to adult domestic assault, research issues that need further attention, and ethical issues in this research. The book’s second section examines the role of families and social support in the adjustment of children in maltreating families. Chapters address research on ways to overcome mother blaming, fathering in the context of domestic assault, further areas that need social science research attention, a conceptual framework for including children’s own perceptions in future empirical study of exposure to adult domestic assault, and crucial issues in research on social networks and social supports of children exposed to domestic violence. The final section of the book focuses on research and evaluation of current intervention initiatives and outcome studies. Chapters examine the evaluation of intervention efforts, larger system evaluations and interventions, and theoretical approaches to primary prevention of domestic violence and alternatives to domestic violence that each community can activate. Themes in the volume include the variability of definitions of central concepts, the problem of relying on measures that are not culturally heterogeneous, ethical concerns, and the emphasis on setting standards and selecting criteria best suited for evaluating the effectiveness of interventions. Chapter reference lists, author index, and subject index