Assessing Accountability and Risk in a Batterers' Intervention Group: Do Group Leaders and Members Agree?

Background:Group intervention has been the format of choice in the large majority of intervention programs for domestic abusers.  One of the key goals of batterers’ intervention groups is to reduce the risk of subsequent violence, and leaders usually view accountability and risk assessment as critical components in the group process. Group leaders are often asked to assess how well members are meeting their goals, to assess their risk for re-assault, and report to probation officers or judges. This study uses data from a process evaluation of pyschoeducational batterer intervention groups to explore the consistency between group leaders’ assessment with group participants’ self-assessment of their levels of accountability and risk of reassault.

Methods: Court-ordered group members who were in the batterers’ intervention program for 24 weeks participated in this study. Of the 116 men who agreed to participate, on-going data were collected from 64 men. Every two weeks, group leaders filled out surveys on each group member; group members filled out a survey on themselves. We report data from the first 18 weeks of the program.

Using Likert scales, group members completed surveys that assessed their level of accountability in the last month and their likelihood of harming their partner physically, psychologically or financially in the next 9 months. Paired sample t-tests were used in comparing group leader and group member means in accountability and measure of risk at each time point. Repeated measures ANOVA assessed the extent to which accountability and risk assessments ratings changed over time. We also examined the extent to which clustering at the group level may have influenced our bivariate findings. Despite various attempts, our sample size precluded us from estimating any significant multivariate models.

Results: Group leaders consistently rated the members as less accountable than group members rated themselves.  Leaders rated members as significantly more accountable at time 9 [(M =3.68, SD=.65,), t=3.309 p<.01], compared to time 1 (M=3.00, SD=0.83).  A repeated measures ANOVA [F (35, 72.40) =.310, MSE=.280, p=.87, η² =.02] determined that time did not have a significant effect on group members’ ratings in accountability during the nine data collection times. However, for group leaders, time had a significant effect on their assessment of group members’ accountability [F (35, 44.8) = 2.56, MSE= .98, p<.05, η² =.18] over the nine data collection times.

Group members consistently and significantly rated themselves at lower risk of perpetrating psychological, physical and financial harm on their partners than the group leaders rated them. Group members and group leaders did not change in their assessments of group members’ likelihood of perpetrating any harm on their partners throughout the group.

Implications: Findings suggest that group members and group leaders are far apart in their views of members’ accountability and in assessing their risk of re-abuse. Improving our understanding of how closely group leaders and group members agree on issues of risk and accountability may be helpful in designing effective programs and program evaluations.