Session: Intimate Partner Violence in LGBQ Communities: Existing Datasets, Propensity Score Analysis, and Future Methodological Directions (Society for Social Work and Research 20th Annual Conference - Grand Challenges for Social Work: Setting a Research Agenda for the Future)

Symposium Theme: This symposium brings together researchers interested in intimate partner violence (IPV) and researchers experienced with Propensity Score Analysis (PSA) to explore IPV in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBQ) communities. Three papers will discuss this theme. The first paper presents a systematic review of currently available U.S. national datasets that contain information on IPV and sexual orientation or gender of both partners in a relationship. Presenters discuss the 14 IPV datasets identified in their review and the potential strengths and limitations of the four datasets that also included information on sexual orientation and/or gender of partners. The second paper provides an overview of relevant PSA techniques and heuristically demonstrates their application to analyses where subgroup differences pose particular concern for analyzing between-group differences. An illustrative example is used in which propensity score matching and weighting are applied to the investigation of differences between members of same-sex and mixed-sex couples with respect to the occurrence of IPV. This paper also highlights how PSA may be used to strengthen the internal validity of other analyses in which subgroup comparisons are made. The third paper presents substantive findings from a study employing PSA techniques and logistic regression to rigorously examine various forms of IPV victimization and perpetration prevalence (measured with the Revised Conflict Tactics Scale) in same-sex versus mixed-sex couples. U.S. data from the International Dating Violence Study (2001-2006) are used with an analytic sample of 3,960 respondents who provided details on their most recent mixed-sex and 121 respondents on their most recent same-sex intimate relationship. Results suggest that U.S. university students in same-sex couples may experience higher levels of IPV injury perpetration and victimization than those in mixed-sex relationships. A social worker with extensive experience working with LGBTQI+ communities and an expert on PSA will serve as discussants.

Importance: IPV is a costly social issue with wide-ranging negative impacts on people of all gender identities/expressions and sexual orientations. Although research has repeatedly estimated IPV victimization rates for individuals in LGBQ groups to be similar or greater than rates for those who identify as heterosexual, far less is known regarding differences in IPV perpetration. Additionally, scant research is available on the unique prevention and service needs of these groups, and the research that currently exists largely relies on analytic methods that fail to employ robust methods for handling endogeneity bias, non-equivalent group comparison, and disproportionate subgroups. This symposium highlights critical limitations to the extant research on IPV in LGBQ groups and highlights the opportunity PSA provides for moving this area of research forward.

Implications: To learn how to best meet the unique IPV prevention and service needs of people in LGBQ populations, ongoing research is needed on this topic. Although ideally future research will include larger sample sizes, employing PSA techniques in secondary analysis of existing datasets to examine topics such as IPV risk and protective factors and IPV impacts for these communities will serve to guide practitioners’ work with these largely underserved and marginalized groups.