Achieving Safety and Integrity in Conducting Research With Intimate Partner Violence Survivors

In their paper, Burge et al. (2014) describe an innovative methodology for studying real-time antecedents to intimate partner violence (IPV), as well as the methods employed to ensure the safety of research participants. Over a 12-week timespan, 200 women in moderately violent relationships were asked to make daily phone calls, using a password-protected, interactive voice response system, to provide information about new violence and abuse, and the circumstances that surrounded it. The article details the many safety procedures employed. The authors report that only 2 women were withdrawn from the study for safety reasons. In addition, in post-participation interviews, many participants reported on the increased safety they experienced as a result of participating in the study. These results are discussed in the commentary as part of a growing trend that shows that studies that have well-designed safety procedures in place may actually constitute a kind of inadvertent but effective intervention for abuse survivors in healthcare settings. Implications of such procedures for continued research development in this area, as well as for designing and evaluating innovative health care-based IPV interventions are discussed.