Violence Against Women and Family Violence: Developments in Research, Practice, and Policy

• NCJ Number: 199701
• Date Published: January 2004
• Length: 352 pages
• Grant Number(s): 1998-WT-VX-0016
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)

Annotation

These papers on research, practice, and policy pertinent to violence against women and family violence address the extent and context of such violence; antecedents to and consequences of such violence; collaborations, policies, programs, and services; and building an infrastructure to improve research capacity and practice.

Abstract

In the Federal Violence Against Women Act, Congress directed the National Research Council to convene the Panel on Research on Violence Against Women to "develop a framework for clarifying what is known about the nature and scope" of violence against women. In the resulting report, "Understanding Violence Against Women" (Crowell and Burgess, 1996), panel members presented a comprehensive, yet critical, synthesis of the current state of research and practices. One purpose of the current compendium is to document how knowledge gaps in research and practice identified in this report have been addressed by recently funded projects. The papers present important new substantive knowledge about the extent and nature of violence against women and family violence; and they describe innovative collaborations, policies, programs, services, and interventions that have been implemented and evaluated, particularly those that involve a criminal justice response. An overview that introduces each of the four major sections of papers outlines the gaps in knowledge that were identified in "Understanding Violence Against Women" and indicates how the new knowledge addresses key gaps in research and practice. The papers are organized in a similar format. After discussing the issues addressed in the research, the paper describes the research design and presents the results. Each paper concludes with a discussion of implications of the study findings for researchers and practitioners.