Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) Prevention and Mitigation: Professionals' Perspectives on Solutions to IPV Experienced By American Indian Women
The disproportionate rates of intimate partner violence (IPV) against American Indian (AI) women are public health and human rights concerns, urgently in need of addressing. Despite the pressing need to ameliorate the disproportionate rates AI women experience IPV, there is no known empirical research uncovering professionals’ perspectives on IPV prevention and mitigation for AI women. Thus, the purpose of this paper presentation is to identify solutions to IPV proposed by professionals who interact with AI women who have experienced IPV. The overarching research question for his inquiry was, “What do professionals propose as solutions to IPV experienced by AI women?”
Methods:
Data for this paper presentation were derived from a larger critical ethnography with extensive validity requirements upheld. Participants were purposively selected based on their professional interactions with women who experienced IPV and were recruited through community news sources, word-of-mouth, posted fliers, and referrals. Semi-structured ethnographic interviews with 34 professionals who worked with female AI victims of IPV were conducted in a sample, which was primarily female (68% female; 32% male) and American Indian (93%). Many professionals (44%) were also AI women who experienced IPV; thus many participants spoke both from personal and professional vantage points. Interviews elicited participants’ perspectives on reasons for IPV and ways to ameliorate it. Examples of interview questions included, “What are some reasons for IPV occurring within the community?” and “What do you think would help stop it?” Interviews were transcribed verbatim and coded using pragmatic horizon analysis to uncover explicit and implicit meanings from data using the data analysis software, NVivo.
Results:
Solutions to IPV as experienced by AI women fell along multiple domains and included prevention, treatment, and remediation efforts. The most frequently reported solutions to IPV included increasing education and outreach about IPV, creating AI community leaders to lead the charge of anti-violence, and increasing parental involvement in modeling non-violent relationships. Many of the proposed solutions were aimed at children and involved socializing children into healthier relationship norms. Professionals also spoke about the need for greater community awareness of IPV, children’s exposure to alternative (non-violent) family relations, more guidance for children and young adults on conflict resolution, and healthy relationships training and education. Professionals spoke about the need for greater training in the formal service system, holistic and family-centered interventions, accountability within the service system and for perpetrators, and the need to change the existing law and justice system related to IPV.
Conclusions and Implications:
Professionals, the majority of whom were AI and many who were also victims of IPV, proposed long-term strategies that targeted IPV prevention and mitigation. Rather than focusing on women, the majority of the proposed solutions involved families, children, and the formal service system. Holistic solutions indicated the need to focus on multiple interacting systems, including the formal service system, family systems, and community systems. Given the majority of intervention efforts focus on victims and perpetrators of IPV, this research indicates a need to broaden social work interventions to address IPV holistically.