Post-Incarceration Partner Violence: Examining the Social Context of Victimization to Inform Victim Services and Prevention, 5 U.S. States, 2008-2015 (ICPSR 37327)
Version Date: Jan 27, 2021 View help for published
Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s)
Tasseli McKay, Research Triangle Institute
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR37327.v1
Version V1
Summary View help for Summary
Do post-incarceration partner violence experiences in justice-involved couples conform to the most widely used evidence based typology of partner violence in the general population (Johnson, 2008)? What aspects of social context at the individual, couple/family, and community levels shape post-incarceration partner violence experiences? Do couple/family-level social context factors mediate the observed relationship between the identified community-level influences and experiences of partner violence? What social context factors at the individual, couple/family, and community levels do members of justice-involved couples see as shaping their experiences of partner violence?
Victim advocates and criminal justice system personnel have long recognized the importance of context in guiding victim services and criminal justice system responses to violence, yet little evidence exists to guide such approaches. Despite the very high prevalence of post-incarceration partner violence observed in the first study to rigorously measure it (the Multi-site Study on Incarceration, Parenting, and Partnering), little is known of the social contextual factors that shape violent victimization in justice-involved couples. The Post-Incarceration Partner Violence: Examining the Social Context of Victimization to Inform Victim Services and Prevention study addressed this gap by assessing the role of contextual factors that empirical and theoretical work suggests could affect partner violence in this vulnerable population. This secondary analysis study drew on longitudinal data from the MFS-IP dataset and other public sources to develop an actionable understanding of the social contexts that influence the observed high prevalence of violence in a sample of couples that have contact with the criminal justice system but are disconnected from formal service delivery systems or other sources of help. The researcher conducted a theory-driven typology analysis to describe the social context of post-incarceration partner violence at the couple level, and utilized quantitative modeling and in-depth qualitative analysis to assess the individual-, couple/family-, and community-level contexts that shape partner violence.
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Subject Terms View help for Subject Terms
Geographic Coverage View help for Geographic Coverage
Smallest Geographic Unit View help for Smallest Geographic Unit
zip code
Restrictions View help for Restrictions
Access to these data is restricted. Users interested in obtaining these data must complete a Restricted Data Use Agreement, specify the reason for the request, and obtain IRB approval or notice of exemption for their research.
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Date of Collection View help for Date of Collection
Data Collection Notes View help for Data Collection Notes
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The qualitative data are not available at this time.
Study Purpose View help for Study Purpose
The purpose of this study was to better understand the social context of post-incarceration partner violence victimization. This, in turn, informs context-responsive victim services and primary and secondary prevention efforts.
Study Design View help for Study Design
The study relied primarily on quantitative data from the Multi-site Family Study on Incarceration, Parenting and Partnering ("Multi-site Family Study"), funded by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation and Office of Family Assistance. The Multi-site Family Study was a longitudinal, couples-based study of family relationships during a male partner's incarceration and reentry carried out from 2008-2015.
In addition to the Multi-site Family Study quantitative data previously archived, the current project prepared and used a deidentified qualitative dataset collected with a subset of Multi-site Family Study. The Post-Incarceration Partner Violence Study obtained data from three government sources: state correctional agencies (as compiled by Justice Atlas), the U.S. Census Bureau (as compiled by the Population Studies Center at the Institute for Social Research), and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Justice Atlas, an open-access source for criminal justice system data, provided deidentified, aggregated data on prison admissions rate (admissions per 1,000 adults) by ZIP code for three of the five states to which Multi-site Family Study participants returned from prison. The Population Studies Center provided deidentified, aggregated American Community Survey data on mean and median income by ZIP code. The CDC provided restricted-access data on violent death by ZIP code from the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) as well as public data on life expectancy at birth by ZIP code through the Small-area Life Expectancy Estimates Project. The data use agreement for NVDRS specifies that, to protect NVDRS subjects, the ZIP code-level data provided for this project cannot be included in public archiving. Multi-site Family Study quantitative data were then linked with data from government sources using the ZIP code variable.
Sample View help for Sample
The Multi-site Family Study conducted separate but parallel surveys and in-depth qualitative interviews with 1,991 incarcerated men and 1,482 of their intimate or coparenting partners from five U.S. states. Participants completed baseline surveys during the male partner's incarceration in state prison, with follow-up surveys conducted 9, 18, and 34 months later. Qualitative data were collected from 167 respondents during in-depth, open-ended interviews of approximately 90 minutes that occurred around the time of the male partner's reentry from prison. The Post-Incarceration Partner Violence study used survey data from both members of study couples and from each follow-up time point, including baseline, 9-, 18-, and 34-month waves. For analyses involving linking to other government data sources, individuals who lived in ZIP codes with only one study participant (483 ZIP codes) were excluded. The qualitative analysis focused on the subset of qualitative study participants who discussed intimate partner violence during their interviews (N=66).
Time Method View help for Time Method
Universe View help for Universe
Opposite-sex couples in which the male partner was incarcerated at the time of study enrollment.
Unit(s) of Observation View help for Unit(s) of Observation
Data Source View help for Data Source
Multi-site Family Study on Incarceration, Parenting and Partnering ("Multi-site Family Study"), funded by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation and Office of Family Assistance;
The Population Studies Center provided deidentified, aggregated American Community Survey data on mean and median income by ZIP code;
Justice Atlas, an open-access source for criminal justice system data, provided deidentified, aggregated data on prison admissions rate (admissions per 1,000 adults) by ZIP code for three of the five states to which Multi-site Family Study participants returned from prison;
The CDC provided restricted-access data on violent death by ZIP code from the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) as well as public data on life expectancy at birth by ZIP code through the Small-area Life Expectancy Estimates Project.
Data Type(s) View help for Data Type(s)
Mode of Data Collection View help for Mode of Data Collection
Description of Variables View help for Description of Variables
Variables in this study focus on topics such as collective efficacy, controlling behavior, feelings of safety, perceptions of one's own or one's children's physical safety, formal social control, experiences or perceptions of surveillance, encounters with law enforcement or correctional personnel not involving physical force or coercion, informal social control, physical violence, poverty, financial strain, money fears or worries, sense of scarcity, mental health symptoms, experiences or perceptions of emotional disregulation, perceived life chances, perceptions of own future prospects, experiences of forcible arrest and forcible imprisonment, other experiences of physical violence by government agents, feelings of physical helplessness while under forcible confinement, parenting, birth trauma, gaps in contributions and perspectives between partners or coparents resulting from formerly incarcerated men's lack of life skills, conflict initiation, illegal activities, and trauma.
Response Rates View help for Response Rates
Multi-site Family Study on Incarceration, Parenting and Partnering: Response rates were 76% at baseline, 74% at 9 months, 78% at 18 months, and 83% at 34 months.
Presence of Common Scales View help for Presence of Common Scales
None
HideOriginal Release Date View help for Original Release Date
2021-01-27
Version History View help for Version History
2021-01-27 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:
- Performed consistency checks.
- Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
Notes
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This dataset is maintained and distributed by the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD), the criminal justice archive within ICPSR. NACJD is primarily sponsored by three agencies within the U.S. Department of Justice: the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.