Intimate Partner Violence and Patterns of Safety Strategy Use: Does Problem Drinking Influence Help Seeking?

Women’s responses to intimate partner violence (IPV) range from private strategies to control the abuse to more public help seeking. While research has examined the ways in which abused women keep themselves and their children safe, few studies have considered patterns of safety strategy use and the factors that influence women’s use of strategies, particularly problem drinking among women. Alcohol misuse has been linked to male-to-female IPV but it has not been examined in association with use of safety strategies.

Interviews were conducted with 197 women seeking temporary protective orders against their abusive male partners/ex-partners. Latent class analysis was used to group women into classes based on their use of safety strategies using 17-items from the Intimate Partner Violence Strategies Index. Problem drinking was assessed using the 4-item CAGE questionnaire, where a higher score indicates a potential alcohol problem (scores >=2 are clinically significant). Analysis of variance and Pearson’s chi-square tests were used to examine the association between safety strategy class and problem drinking.

Five classes of safety strategy use were identified: high activity doing everything (Class 1: 13.7%, n= 30); high activity police avoidant (Class 3: 11%, n= 20); medium activity safety planning (Class 2: 11.8%, n= 24); medium activity placating (Class 4: 52.9%, n= 101); low activity police involved (Class 5: 10.7%, n= 22). Approximately 26% of the women had a clinically significant score on the CAGE. Comparing across classes, women in the two high activity classes had higher CAGE scores on average compared to women in the medium and low activity classes though the difference was not statistically significant. In the between class comparison, class membership varied based on employment status, experience of IPV, and problem drinking. A greater proportion of women who were not employed full time or part time, who experienced more severe physical and/or sexual violence, who had sustained a severe injury from IPV, or who scored higher on the assessment for problem drinking were in the higher activity safety strategy classes.

Public health practitioners and other individuals providing services to abused women need a better understanding of what women do to increase their safety. In addition to assessing history of violence experienced, practitioners should consider assessing women for substance use problems given that they could influence their ability to fully engage in strategies to enhance their safety.