The Community Advocacy Project - Detailed Report

• Services offered are community-based and home-based.
• Activities are driven by the women, not the advocates.
• Advocates are proactive and engaged in linking women with community resources.
• Advocates are knowledgeable about available community resources and effective strategies for obtaining them.
• Advocates focus on enhancing women's social support.
• Advocates should be highly trained in empathy and active listening.

Sullivan, C.M., & Bybee, D.I. (1999). Reducing violence using community-based advocacy for women with abusive partners. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 67(1), 43-53.

Randomized controlled trial (N=278). Participants were recruited from a shelter program for women with abusive husbands. Measures were collected 6 times over a two-year period and included the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS), Index of Psychological Abuse, Center for Epidemiology Studies - Depression (CES-D) scale, among others. Women who worked with advocates experienced less violence over time, reported higher quality of life and social support, and had less difficulty obtaining community resources. Advocates were undergraduate women trained in a Community Psychology course and working with a single client. More than twice as many women receiving advocacy services (experimental condition) experienced no violence across the two years post-intervention compared to women who did not receive such services (control condition).

Bybee, D.I., & Sullivan, C.M. (2002). The process through which a strengths-based intervention resulted in positive change for battered women over time. American Journal of Community Psychology, 30(1), 103-132.

Same study sample as Sullivan & Bybee, 1999 (above). Explored the complex mediational process through which the program impacted clients. As hypothesized, the advocacy intervention first resulted in women successfully obtaining desired community resources and increasing their social support, which enhanced their overall quality of life. This improvement in well-being appeared to serve as a protective factor from subsequent abuse, as women who received the intervention were significantly less likely to be abused at two-year follow-up compared to women in the control condition. Increased quality of life completely mediated the impact of the advocacy intervention on later re-abuse.

Allen, N.E., Bybee, D.I., & Sullivan, C.M. (2004). Battered women's multitude of needs: Evidence supporting the need for comprehensive advocacy. Violence Against Women, 1(9), 1015-1035.

Same study sample as Sullivan & Bybee, 1999 (above). Examined whether the extent to which advocacy was effective was dependent on the types of needs that survivors presented. Cluster analysis revealed five distinct subgroups of survivors: one group focused primarily on activities to acquire housing, a second worked more on education and employment, a third focused heavily on legal issues, and two groups were characterized by survivors' level of activity across a variety of needs ("high" and "low"). Despite the varied constellations of needs survivors presented, broad-based advocacy enhanced survivors' self-reported effectiveness and level of activity in mobilizing needed community resources. These findings suggest that comprehensive and individualized approaches to advocacy for battered women are essential.

Bybee, D.I., & Sullivan, C.M. (2005). Predicting re-victimization of battered women three years after exiting a shelter program. American Journal of Community Psychology, 36(1/2), 85-96.

Three-year follow-up of the study sample in Sullivan & Bybee, 1999 (above). The advocacy program's effect on risk of re-victimization did not continue three years post-intervention. However, having worked with an advocate three years prior continued to have a positive impact on women's quality of life and level of social support. Women also reported less re-abuse if, one year prior to the current study, they were employed and/or reported higher quality of life.

Sullivan, C.M. (2003). Using the ESID model to reduce intimate male violence against women. American Journal of Community Psychology, 32(3), 295-303.

Sullivan, C.M. (2000). A model for effectively advocating for women with abusive partners. In J.P. Vincent & E.N. Jouriles (Eds.), Domestic violence: Guidelines for research-informed practice (pp. 126-143). London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.