Context, Challenges, and Tensions in Global Efforts to Engage Men in the Prevention of Violence against Women: An Ecological Analysis.

As gender-based violence prevention programs around the world increasingly include efforts to engage men and boys as antiviolence allies, both the profound benefits and the inherent complexities of these efforts are emerging. Acknowledging and exploring tensions associated with engaging men is an important element of thoughtfully fostering men's antiviolence ally movements so as to both respectfully invite men into anti-violence work and create effective, gender-equitable prevention programming. To this end, this study presents descriptive findings regarding challenges associated with men's engagement programming from in-depth interviews with twenty-nine representatives of organizations that engage men and boys in preventing violence against women and girls in Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania, and North and South America. Programs reported negotiating complex issues related to gender, the intersectional nature of men's identities, and establishing legitimacy and sustainability within communities while maintaining ideological focus and consistency. Additionally, programs reported that these tensions manifest across ecological layers of analysis, and impact both the participation of individual men and the programs' experiences in community and national contexts.

Danger zone: battered mothers and their families in supervised visitation.

Supervised visitation centers (SVCs) have developed rapidly across the United States. Increasingly, courts are restricting contact between abusive intimate partners and their children by ordering visitation or exchanges to occur at SVCs. This article describes some of the key lessons the authors learned over 18 months of planning and then another 18 months of implementation at a SVC developed specifically to serve families for whom domestic violence was their primary reason for referral. The authors have organized their experiences around five major themes: (a) battered women in supervised visitation, (b) how battering continues during supervised visitation, (c) how rules at the SVC evolved over the first 18 months of implementation, (d) the importance of well-trained visit monitors, and (e) the need to embed SVCs within a larger context of coordinated community responses to domestic violence.

The men's domestic abuse check-up: a protocol for reaching the nonadjudicated and untreated man who batters and who abuses substances.

Batterer intervention programs primarily work with individuals mandated to participate. Commonly, attrition is high and outcomes are modest. Motivational enhancement therapy (MET), most widely studied in the substance abuse field, offers a potentially effective approach to improving self-referral to treatment, program retention, treatment compliance, and posttreatment outcomes among men who batter and who abuse substances. A strategy for using a catalyst variant of MET (a "check-up") to reach untreated, nonadjudicated perpetrators is described in detail. Unique challenges in evaluating the success of this approach are discussed, including attending to victim safety and determining indicators of increased motivation for change.

Self-Determination Theory and Motivational Interviewing: Complementary Models to Elicit Voluntary Engagement by Partner-Abusive Men.

Research examining intimate partner violence (IPV) has lacked a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding and treating behavior. The authors propose two complementary models, a treatment approach (Motivational Interviewing, MI) informed by a theory (Self-Determination Theory; SDT), as a way of integrating existing knowledge and suggesting new directions in intervening early with IPV perpetrators. MI is a client-centered clinical intervention intended to assist in strengthening motivation to change and has been widely implemented in the substance abuse literature. SDT is a theory that focuses on internal versus external motivation and considers elements that impact optimal functioning and psychological well-being. These elements include psychological needs, integration of behavioral regulations, and contextual influences on motivation. Each of these aspects of SDT is described in detail and in the context of IPV etiology and intervention using motivational interviewing.

Reflections on Jackson Katz and the MVP Program.

This article offers reflections on the article "Bystander Training as Leadership Training: Notes on the Origins, Philosophy and Pedagogy of the Mentors in Violence Prevention Model" by Jackson Katz in this issue of Violence Against Women. The authors rely on their unique perspectives in varying roles at the University of California (UC) Berkeley, as well as on relevant social science and social justice research. The article explores five themes of violence prevention and anti-oppression work: leadership, social justice, gender identity, issues of identity and status, and diffusion of innovation. Through these five themes, the authors acknowledge Mentors for Violence Prevention's (MVP) successes while critically analyzing opportunities for a more comprehensive approach to violence prevention.

Assessment of Intimate Partner Violence by Child Welfare Services.

The purpose of this study was to describe policy and practice with respect to the assessment of intimate partner violence in a sample of child welfare agencies located throughout the United States and to examine the relationship of contextual characteristics and assessment practices. Telephone interviews were conducted with key informants from child welfare agencies. A snowball interviewing strategy was used to identify the best informant in each agency. Almost all of the participating agencies conducted some assessment of intimate partner violence, with most reporting that the majority of screening or assessment occurred during investigation of referrals. However, only 43.1% reported that all of the families referred to the child welfare system were assessed for intimate partner violence, and 52.8% indicated they had a written policy pertaining to screening and assessment of the problem. There was little relationship between county or agency characteristics and assessment practices. Additional research is needed to determine factors that influence assessment practices and to identify strategies to support and extend efforts to identify intimate partner violence and provide appropriate services for families in the child welfare system.

Primary Prevention Is? A Global Perspective on How Organizations Engaging Men in Preventing Gender-Based Violence Conceptualize and Operationalize Their Work.

Engaging men in addressing violence against women (VAW) has become a strategy in the global prevention of gender-based violence. Concurrently, Western public health frameworks have been utilized to guide prevention agendas worldwide. Using qualitative methods, this study describes how global anti-violence organizations that partner with men conceptualize primary prevention in their work. Findings suggest that "primary prevention" is not a fixed term in the context of VAW and that front-line prevention work challenges rigidly delineated distinctions between levels of prevention. Much can be learned from global organizations' unique and contextualized approaches to the prevention of VAW.

Adult domestic violence in cases of international parental child abduction.

This article discusses the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction and its impact on battered mothers and their children seeking safety in the United States. We discuss relevant articles of the convention, the extent to which adult domestic violence is present in cases of international parental abduction, and cases in which battered mothers have contested the forced return of their children to an abusive partner. We conclude with recommended steps needed in research, training, and legislation that may increase the likelihood of safe outcomes for battered mothers and their children.

Strategies to Engage Men and Boys in Violence Prevention: A Global Organizational Perspective.

This study presents descriptive findings from in-depth interviews with 29 representatives of organizations in Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania, and North and South America that engage men and boys in preventing gender-based violence. In particular, the findings suggest that strategies are responsive to the specific cultural, economic, and contextual concerns of the local community, with nuanced messages and appropriate messengers. In addition, respondents reported key principles informing their organizational strategies to deepen men and boys' engagement. Attention is also paid to respondents' caution about the risks of framing of engagement practices as separate from both women's organizations and women and girls themselves.

Finding common ground in the study of child maltreatment, youth violence, and adult domestic violence.

For several decades, we have witnessed a surge in public policies aimed at ending child maltreatment, youth violence, and adult domestic violence. Commensurate with this increased interest has been a growing body of research on each issue's etiology, affected population, and the public policy and prevention impacts. Even a cursory review of the literature suggests a number of commonalities across these forms of violence. As such, it seems timely and prudent to craft a research framework that facilitates the identification and dissemination of practice and policy innovations that can address all three concerns. This article articulates an overarching framework to guide researchers in better identifying common avenues of study. After summarizing the commonalities found across the three areas, the authors identify cross-cutting issues that have particular relevance for advancing our understanding of violence and its effects on personal and social interactions.

Global efforts to engage men in preventing violence against women: an international survey.

This research note expands on the limited body of knowledge about men's engagement in preventing violence against women. One hundred and sixty-five individuals representing organizations from around the world participated in a brief online survey about their efforts to engage men in violence prevention. This study reveals a large and diverse global community working to engage men in preventing violence against women. The level of involvement is broad, from locally contained organizations to global collaborations. This study is a first step toward building a comparative knowledge base to inform program design and implementation.

The Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse (MINCAVA): providing research, education, and access to information on violence against women and children.

The Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse (MINCAVA) was established in 1994 through an appropriation of the Minnesota Legislature. Located at the University of Minnesota, MINCAVA conducts original research, develops extensive collections of translational materials, provides higher education training on family violence prevention, and disseminates information globally. Over a dozen professional and student staff work on projects funded by federal, state, and private sources and collaborate closely with national and global advisory boards and partner agencies as well as local community-based and national advocacy organizations. The Center operates multiple project-specific and general websites that receive millions of unique visits each year from dozens of countries.

Evaluating the impact of intimate partner violence on the perpetrator: the Perceived Consequences of Domestic Violence Questionnaire.

Surprisingly, little is known about how IPV perpetrators perceive the conse quences of their violent behavior. This article describes the development and evaluation of the Perceived Consequences of Domestic Violence Questionnaire (PCDVQ). The PCDVQ is a 27 item self report instrument designed to assess the consequences of intimate partner violence (IPV) as perceived by the perpetrator. Data from 124 nontreatment seeking, male, IPV perpetrators recruited from the community provided support for the internal consistency of the PCDVQ. Participants reported an average of 9.97 (SD = 4.57) consequences. Scores on the PCDVQ significantly predicted motivation for change, beta =.19, t(113) = 2.03, p < .05, and treatment seeking, chi(2)(df = 1) = 10.79, p < .01, odds ratio = 1.27 (95% CI: 1.10 1.46). Clinical implications of this instrument are discussed.

Normative misperceptions of abuse among perpetrators of intimate partner violence.

This research was designed to evaluate the applicability of social norms approaches to interventions with male perpetrators of intimate partner violence (IPV). Participants included 124 nonadjudicated IPV perpetrating men recruited from the general population who completed assessment of their own IPV behaviors via telephone interviews and estimated the prevalence of behaviors in other men. Results indicated that IPV perpetrators consistently overestimated the percentage of men who engaged in IPV and that their estimates were associated with violence toward their partner over the past 90 days. Findings provide preliminary support for incorporating social norms approaches into clinical applications.

Defining child exposure to domestic violence as neglect: Minnesota's difficult experience.

Policymakers are increasingly focusing on children exposed to domestic violence. The 1999 Minnesota legislature amended the definition of child neglect to include a child's exposure to family violence. What was initially seen as a simple change to bring more attention to children exposed to domestic violence resulted in great turmoil across Minnesota's county-run child protection system. Referrals to county child protection agencies expanded rapidly in the months following the law change, and no new state funding was provided to implement the legislation. A coalition of child welfare administrators and battered women's advocates successfully lobbied for the repeal of this change in definition. Many were dissatisfied with both the impact of the legislation and the fact that exposed children and their families were left without badly needed services. This article reconstructs how Minnesota's legislature made this change, its consequences, and the lessons that may be drawn from this experience.