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Commentary on Development of Measures of Abuse Among Women with Disabilities and the Characteristics of Their Perpetrators

NCJ Number
228310
Journal
Violence Against Women Volume: 15 Issue: 9 Dated: September 2009 Pages: 1035-1039
Author(s)
Rebecca J. Macy
Date Published
September 2009
Length
5 pages
Annotation
This article provides comments on the development of valid measures for assessing violence against disabled and deaf women, the Safer and Stronger Program (SSP).
Abstract
The research on the prevalence and incidence of violence against women shows that some groups of women, including women with disabilities, are much more burdened with violent victimization than other groups of women. The field often lacks the measures to fully investigate and understand violence against women who are members of diverse communities. The original study provided a sound foundation for further study while clearly making the case for further study of this segment of the population. The author commends the SSP program developers for beginning to tackle the important issue for women with disabilities, since without measures, the opportunities to document, study, and understand the experiences and lives of all women who are victimized by violence would be missed. Additionally, the author discusses alternative methods to analyze the data collected in the original study and questions whether a single instrument can effectively capture the experiences of abuse and violence from women with diverse disabilities. References