Culturally Specific Interventions for Female Survivors of Gender-Based Violence

Background and Purpose

Gender-based violence (GBV) is among the most pervasive forms of interpersonal violence, and affects women around the globe. GBV includes crimes such as sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and human trafficking. Culturally tailored and community-specific GBV interventions have the potential to increase the acceptability and feasibility of GBV services and programs as well as enhance survivors’ psychological well-being. Unfortunately, few GBV interventions have been developed and evaluated, and even fewer culturally specific interventions exist. Notably, most GBV interventions were developed and evaluated for dominant culture populations within the United States. When an intervention is used with a population outside of the group for which the intervention was developed and evaluated, the intervention might not be efficacious. This systematic review will examine the number of culturally specific GBV interventions currently available as well as the level of evidence supporting those interventions.

Methods

Using “best practices” for conducting systematic reviews and expert consultation, a priori inclusion criteria were defined and a bibliographic search of 7 electronic databases was conducted. Once articles were identified, we conducted a backward search of the references of those articles to find additional literature not identified via the keyword search. Included studies were limited to English language studies published before Spring, 2014. Each article was assessed for study relevance using the following inclusion criteria: (a) the article referred to a culture and/or cultural group in text; (b) the study focused on evaluating a psychosocial intervention that was either being developed, had been developed, or was adapted for the population of interest; (c) adult women survivors of GBV were the focal sample; and (d) psychological outcomes were the main focus of the research. To conduct a consistent review across documents, we developed a standardized abstraction form to capture information from each article such as study aims, intervention model, fidelity instruments used, study design, sample, study method, results, implications, as well as the research strengths and limitations

Results

Upon review of study titles, abstracts, and full-text copies, the bibliographic search yielded 15 relevant studies that met a priori eligibility criteria. Reviewed articles reflected a variety of populations and varying stages of intervention development. For analysis, articles were separated into categories based on research methods: (a) reflection (n=1); (b) qualitative evaluations (n=4); (c) mixed methods (n=3); (d) non-experimental and quasi-experimental designs (n=3); and (e) randomized controlled trials (n=4). Detailed research-related information about each reviewed article, including key findings, outcomes and recommendations, indicated that culturally specific GBV interventions are still largely in the nescient stage of development- both domestically and abroad.       

Conclusions and Implications

While culturally specific GBV interventions are widely discussed as a practice recommendation, there are few experimental studies that directly test the efficacy of such interventions domestically and abroad. From this systematic review we see that culturally specific GBV interventions may be effective in ameliorating psychosocial GBV-related symptoms; however, due to the lack of rigor in study design, methods, and measurement, there remains insufficient evidence to make a prudent recommendation of use.