Measuring Community Engagement Practices in Domestic Violence Programs: The Network Oriented Practices Scale (NOPS)

Purpose Despite the costs of survivor isolation, most mainstream domestic violence programs have focused on meeting the needs of individual survivors and possibly their children, disregarding their attenuated social connections. Only in recent years have some advocates begun to address this gap through the development of practices that restore or create new ties between survivors and their informal networks. In order to grow and systematize these nascent network-oriented practices , we need a way to identify and measure them. This article describes the development of the Network-Oriented Practices Scale , designed to fill this gap. Method We developed a series of 35 draft items reflecting each dimension of the network-oriented approach, a model created in a prior community-based participatory research study. We administered them to 234 advocates in domestic violence programs across the country. Exploratory factor analysis identified underlying factors and reduced the number of items. Results The resultant Network-Oriented Practices Scale (NOPS) comprised 14 items across three factors: Mapping Networks and Relationships (working directly with survivors); Engaging the Person who Harmed (working with harming partners); and Engaging Networks Directly (working with informal network members). Conclusions The time has come to develop a more systematic approach to supporting survivors’ renewed links to their communities. The NOPS, described in this brief report, sets the stage, highlighting a set of practices that domestic violence programs can implement, and providing a way to assess their successes and failures in promoting survivors’ connectedness, safety, and healing.