New Investigator Training and Doctoral Dissertations
CDC-RFA-CE08-005
School violence impacts the social, psychological, and physical well being of both
students and teachers and disrupts the learning process. Most federal mandates,
research, and school interventions to address school violence have focused on the
individual's contribution to violence and not on the contribution of the school
environment. While research has suggested that the school social and physical
environment impact the occurrence of school violence, less is known about the
specific factors of this environment that contribute to violence or their interconnection.
These factors offer schools another possible intervention point to reduce violence and
its sequelae. Objectives This study primarily aims to understand what factors of the
school social and physical environment encourage or discourage violence from occurring
at school. Information about the mechanisms by which these factors contribute to the
occurrence and severity of violence at school will also be examined. Secondarily,
differences in the perceptions of factors and their impact will also be examined based
on select individual level characteristics (e.g. gender, experience with violence). Study
Design Concept mapping sessions will be conducted with multiple groups of Baltimore
City public high school students. These sessions will allow for a generation of
statements about the social and physical environment's contribution to violence, a
rating of each statement's importance for the initiation, cessation, and severity of
violence, a generation of a conceptual framework of the contribution of the social and
physical environment and an explanation of this conceptual framework. Analyses of the
reliability and validity of the resulting conceptual framework will be undertaken.
Participants Approximately 60 students from 5 diverse geographic locations in Baltimore
City will participate in all three concept mapping sessions. These youth will all be
students of the Baltimore City Public School System, a large urban school system that
serves primarily African American students. Setting High school students will be
recruited from after school programs under the auspices of the Family League of
Baltimore City. All sessions will be conducted during normal after school activities.
Outcome Measures This study will result in the creation of conceptual frameworks
illustrating how students believe the school environment contributes to the problem
of school violence. The conceptual frameworks will highlight the main components of
the environment that impact violence. Additionally, information about how these
components, as well as the factors that form them, impact the initiation, cessation,
and severity of violence at school will be gathered. A comparative analysis between
the conceptual frameworks of groups of students at both the framework and factor
level will be completed. Additionally, differences in perceptions of factor importance
by select individual level characteristics will be evaluated.
Intimate partner violence is a serious public health concern for which effective
interventions are urgently needed. One approach for prevention efforts is to focus on
safety behaviors that women in abusive relationships can adopt, such as going into
shelter and obtaining protective orders, to help keep them safer and facilitate ending
abuse. The findings from the proposed qualitative study will provide insight into the
barriers and facilitators that women experience to practicing safety behaviors, and help
victim services providers tailor safety planning recommendations to accommodate
women's particular needs and circumstances. Objectives: This research will address
four main questions: (1) what safety behaviors do women in abusive relationships
know about and practice, and how effective do they believe them to be? (2) What are
the issues and circumstances that influence women's decisions to practice particular
safety strategies? (3) What did women think about a risk assessment and safety
planning intervention they received? (4) What are the critical elements of a
customizable safety planning tool designed for use by professionals who serve IPV
victims? Study Design: The proposed study will employ two different qualitative
methodologies: interviews and focus groups. 40 African American victims of intimate
partner violence who received the Danger Assessment intervention will be purposively
selected and interviewed once using an in depth semistructured interview format.
The 2 focus groups, comprising purposively selected local and regional victim services
providers will each be convened once. Both the interviews and focus groups will be
recorded, and the resulting transcripts will be coded and analyzed using the grounded
theory approach to identify salient themes. The qualitative interview findings will be
combined with quantitative data collected from the same participants through the
Danger Assessment project, to identify and analyze patterns. Setting: Baltimore, MD,
a Northeastern coastal U.S. city. Participants: Interview participants: 40 African
American victims of intimate partner violence, aged 18 54, who received the Danger
Assessment intervention and participated in previous quantitative data collection.
Focus group participants: 2 groups of 8 12 participants each. One group comprises
local victim services providers who implemented the intervention; the other is drawn
from a regional coalition of domestic violence victim services providers, whose members
include health care providers, law enforcement, and community based advocates.
Interventions: The proposed qualitative study will build on quantitative data from a
currently funded CDC/NCIPC intervention, "Evaluation of a Danger Assessment
and Safety Education Intervention for Victims of Intimate Partner Violence"
(the DA project). The DA project is a collaboration between Johns Hopkins and the
House of Ruth, a community based shelter and service provider for victims of domestic
violence. It is evaluating an intervention that assesses and communicates the level
of danger faced by a woman in an abusive relationship, and recommends adopting
appropriate safety behaviors. The intervention is administered by the House of
Ruth's legal clinic to a population of predominantly lower income urban African
American women seeking temporary protective orders against their abusive partners.
The DA project's overall goal is to ascertain whether women who receive the
intervention perceive their risk more accurately, adopt more safety behaviors, and
are safer at follow-up than those in the comparison group. Outcome Measures: This
qualitative study will use a grounded theory approach. The goal of this approach is
to elicit information from participants to help build theory about issues and
circumstances that influence the practice of safety behaviors by IPV victims, and create
a customizable safety planning tool that can be used by victims services providers.
Thus, the outcomes are not determined a priori, but will reflect analysis of the
responses to the main research questions outlined in the Objectives: safety behaviors
practiced by women in abusive relationships and women's beliefs about their
effectiveness; the issues and circumstances that influence women's decisions to
practice particular safety strategies; women's thoughts about the intervention they
received; and a customizable safety planning tool designed for use by professionals
who serve IPV
Dissertation Grant Awards for Doctoral Candidates for Violence-Related Injury Prevention Research in Minority Communities (R36)
Sarah Lindstrom
Johns Hopkins University
Bloomberg School of Public Health
Baltimore, MD 21205
Phone: (410)955–2461
E mail: slindst1@johnshopkins.edu
Grant Number: CE001374
Project Title: Modifying the School Environment to Reduce Violence: Suggestions from Students
Project Period: 08/01/2008 – 07/31/2009
Abstract:
Susan Ghanbarpour
Johns Hopkins University
615 N. Wolfe Street
Baltimore, MD 21205
Phone: (410)502–7863
FAX: (410)955–2303
E mail: sghanbar@jhsph.edu
Grant Number: CE001401
Project Title: Understanding Factors that Influence Safety Behaviors Practices by IPV Victims
Project Period: 08/01/2008 – 07/31/2009
Abstract: