Evaluating Victim Services Text and Chat Hotlines

• NCJ Number: 306509
• Date Published: June 2023
• Agencies: NIJ

Annotation

This article reports on a multi-phase research study to assess if and to what extent chat and text lines have successfully helped crime and trauma and crime victims; it discusses the critical role of victim hotlines as confirmed by the study's formative evaluation, efforts to fill the research gap on victim chat and text line service and functionality, how technology-based advocacy is being implemented, high levels of hotline use among Latinos and other underserved populations, skills that advocates use to deliver victim resources, and key research implications as well as limitations.

Abstract

Chat and text lines can be lifelines for victims of crime and trauma who need help. For a Texas victim hotline program in a community with a large, underserved Latino population, chat lines and text lines show promise for helping more clients in more ways than conventional phone hotlines alone. Researchers are now assessing whether and how that promise has successfully helped victims, as part of an ongoing, multi-phase study. Specifically, this article details how a University of Texas at Austin research team is evaluating SAFEline. The program delivers services to victims of sexual assault and exploitation, intimate partner violence, human trafficking, and child abuse and neglect. An NIJ-funded study found that more than five out of six users of the SAFEline chat and text services reported that they found the service to be helpful (84.1%). Similar shares of users of the chat and text lines reported that hotline staff were knowledgeable about community-based resources (85.3%) and users were satisfied with the amount of time hotline staff spent chatting or texting with them (82.9%).