Ep. 35: The Domestic Violence Action Research Collective w/ Dr. Nkiru Nnawulezi & Liz Odongo

1:18AM Feb 8, 2023

Speakers:

Dr. Ian Anson

Campus Connections

Alex Andrews

Dr. Nkiru Nnawulezi

Liz Ogondo

Keywords:

people

survivors

domestic violence

umbc

housing

liz

navigating

research

violence

coalition

hear

question

interview

students

group

work

social sciences

study

field

bit

Hello and welcome to Retrieving the Social Sciences, a production of the Center for Social Science Scholarship. I'm your host, Ian Anson, Associate Professor of Political Science here at UMBC. On today's show, as always, we'll be hearing from UMBC faculty, students, visiting speakers, and community partners about the social science research they've been performing in recent times. Qualitative, quantitative, applied, empirical, normative. On Retrieving the Social Sciences, we bring the best of UMBC's social science community to you.

At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, I recall feeling a sense of relief at suddenly being able to work from home all the time. I'd be able to write and teach from the comfort of my basement office and I'd come up for meals and the occasional chat with my wife before she headed back up and I headed back down. And of course, my cat, Ellie, benefited the most from this time period because she was able to occupy my lap virtually nonstop throughout the workday. But in thinking about this transition to home life, I'm reminded that I'm incredibly fortunate to have a safe and comfortable space in which to do my work. You know, for a lot of people returning home have exposed them to even less safety than they had at their workplaces or their colleges, or other spaces where they would escape the conditions of their living arrangements. And at the most extreme, some people during COVID have been exposed even more to domestic violence than ever before. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, more than 10 million adults in the US experience domestic violence annually. A staggering number, and an incredible one in four women and one in ten men experience sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner during their lifetime. In 2018, the most recent year for which we have a good estimate, partner violence accounted for 20% of all violent crime. Not only is domestic violence a terrible outcome for those afflicted by it, the statistics make it clear that it should be viewed as a national emergency.

That's why I'm so grateful for the opportunity to bring you an interview today with two members of the Domestic Violence Action Research Collective, or DVARC. This group emerged in 2016 as a partnership between the DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Dr. Nkiru Nnawulezi of UMBC. Dr. Nnawulezi is an assistant professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, an affiliate faculty at Yale University's Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS. She earned her doctorate in ecological community psychology at the Michigan State University, and has additional graduate certifications in college teaching, community engagement, and quantitative research methods. Her research examines the ecological factors that enhance equity within and across the domestic violence housing continuum. Her work has been funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health, the state of Michigan and the Center for Victim Research. I was also joined in conversation with Liz Odongo, who serves the DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence as director of grants and programs. Liz has been with the Coalition for over a decade, and has conducted national and international training to address violence against women. Liz oversees the delivery of all programming and activities serving the mission and the goals of the Coalition. She also directs the agency's programmatic efforts and coordinates citywide task forces. Liz has developed curricula for the US military, the State Department, various government agencies, including law enforcement and local organizations, and testified for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Sexual Assault in the Peace Corps. Prior to joining the Coalition, Liz worked as a domestic violence systems advocate and educator at the Women's Center, and was a program officer in the Global Health Population and Nutrition department at the Academy for Educational Development. Liz obtained her master's degree in International Training and Education from American University. I'm so glad to bring you this important conversation. Let's listen in right now.

All right, today, I am so excited to welcome two fantastic guests to the podcast. today. We have Liz Odongo and Dr. Nkiru Nnawulezi here to tell us a little bit about some research that they've been doing as part of the Domestic Violence Action Research Collective, which I really love that name. Uh first of all, thank you so much to both of you for agreeing to be here.

Yeah. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me.

It's a pleasure to meet you, Ian.

Awesome. Well, so I wanted to start out by just saying that, you know, we're often really excited to have researchers on the podcast obviously, this is a podcast that features social science research, but again, like as I was saying, with the title of this, this collective right it's rare to have members of a research team with a name that to me is evocative of like a group of superheroes it kind of sounds a little bit Justice League you know, in terms of its its title, so I wanted to know a little bit and I'm sure our listeners having heard this intro, want to know a little bit about the kind of backstory of This collective What is this collective? How did you get started? And what kind of work? Do you all do?

Yeah, and I'm happy to pick it up, Liz is that, o-, is that good.

Please, yeah.

So back in 2015. I got an email from Liz. Right. I think so listen, coming. Yeah, I'd have an email from Liz saying, hey, and I'm definitely paraphrasing. Hey, super cool. I think that there's some stuff that we might be able to, like overlap on. But you'd be interested in like us talking about your work in domestic violence? And I was like, Absolutely. I'd be, I'd be really interested in talking about that. So I went in, we had a conversation. And in that conversation, we talked about the needs that there was a data gap, right, there were some things that the coalition was really interested in questions that they had things that they wanted to look at, over time. Just interesting ideas that they wanted to collaborate with the researcher on. And I was very much excited. I'm a community psychologist, by training, I really, really value and forefront how practitioners and survivors really identify the community, the issues that are going on in the community, and the kinds of things that they would need in order to support collective well being and liberation. So I cared a lot about that. And what we decided in that meeting was that we could bring together multiple other domestic violence practitioners and policy folks, and and just people we knew in the area, who might be also interested in some of these kinds of data gaps and questions that the coalition had. And after that, I think we had our first conversation went really well. And we ended up having three to four more. And it was a very highly structured it. And it was a highly facilitated, very structured set of conversations. And the group just really meld it like we really got along really well. We came up with some really interesting ideas, things that felt really important to us. And by the fourth time we met and got together, they were like, should we we should probably stay together. And do some work like this thinking has been so helpful. Like we should probably keep going. Would we be interested? Or would everybody be interested in that? And that was five years ago? I think, yeah, six, six years ago, my goodness, six years ago, and so the group definitely has had multiple iterations. But that's a little bit about how we got started. Liz, did I miss anything?

I think one of the things that I love so much about the group is sort of reflected just even in this question, right is for each of us, who are members of DVR, there is so much that we get from the group, and we don't realize that we're giving, right and so just even thinking about how we formed and what brings us to the table and the key pieces that stand out for me, I just I remember being in the space where one of the key roles of the coalition is around advocacy, right. And it's it's advocating with government agencies around their need to do better screen better. To ask about someone's history are experiences with domestic violence and safety. It's with the council and around budget advocacy. And they always want numbers, right public health, what you need are the numbers. And in in our field, we don't have numbers, we're not funded to give numbers and we had come across some of incurious incredible work and in the domestic violence field in Cuba is one of those people where you're just so fortunate to cross paths, and then she was local, and we get to connect, and she was so gracious to just sort of sit down and start to share her expertise. And from that just came this, these conversations that there are really, really great experts in DC doing this work and operating in our silos and you know, public health, right, you're just trying to put the band aids on, you're trying to figure out how to stop the bleeding. And when we came together, we were able to start to see that maybe we could push beyond that, and be able to collaborate around data in data analysis that helped actually increase the funding, increase the awareness. And so it was just such a gift that I think every one of us feels so good about being a part of.

Wow, I mean, what I really love about both of your answers is that it speaks to first of all the incredible relevance of what you all are doing, right. I mean, sometimes in social sciences, I think we can feel a little bit like we're constrained to the ivory tower or publishing articles, and maybe a few people here and there are going to read and maybe we're contributing to some literature that's going to have, you know, a contribution to theory development. But this stuff is really having an impact as you're, as you're describing on the policy process on you know, dollars and cents and how they're distributed. And ultimately, hopefully, right real people Paul, and that's an incredible testament to what you all are doing in this in this research. And I think also, as you described, I mean, the notion that to make these cases to actual stakeholders requires some degree of evidence. And that is a really cool thing right here on achieving the social sciences where, you know, a lot of the time talking about, you know, research methods and, and how we arrive at conclusions, and recommendations. And I think in both of your answers, the kind of things that you're talking about, right, having that sort of data driven approach to being able to show these, these stakeholders kind of what, what needs to be done is urgently needed in more fields than this. And so to see, to hear that success story is really heartening. It makes me feel really great. Especially also to think about right we as social scientists, often we can get stuck, not just in the ivory tower, right, but kind of in these individual sort of silos ourselves as kind of individual researchers. And so it's such a great story. And it makes me feel so, so empowered myself, just to hear about it right to hear of you all getting together and sort of finding these commonalities, and then not just dropping the ball. But then joining forces meaningfully, like that's such a such a rare thing. In real terms, especially as you're doing that sort of across professional settings, that's a really, really awesome thing. So I'm so excited that this has been such a great success story. And I'm really excited to feature it on the podcast to hear a little bit more about what it is that you all have been doing with that collaboration. And so I know that a lot of your research, and the collective itself is obviously focused on the role of domestic violence and understanding broader patterns, right patterns in housing insecurity, among others. And so I wanted to get a little bit into the actual content of what you found in terms of your research, right? What are some broad takeaways that you could tell our listeners about in terms of these patterns and the effects of domestic violence on let's say, housing security, and essentially the lived experiences of people out there?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think one thing I want to say, and based on what you just said, is that not only does the partnership increase impact, but it also increases quality of the research. Right. So it's not just about like the, we did research, and it's good, and it's gonna have it does have and it's having this impact on community. But we also, for those of you who might not be who might not be know a ton about community based work, but being with the community and collaborating and developing and implementing research makes the study more rigorous, makes the study more aligned, like increased actually increases ecological validity. Like it makes better science, when you're able to do it with the people who are directly when you're able to create the work with people who are directly impacted by the issue, when support people who are impacted by the issue. So just want to add that participation. Yeah, it's a way to increase the validity of your work. So that being said, we had this really, you know, we were meeting for about a year. And one of the things that actually can I say we're meeting for about a year with the, with the designing, because one of the things that came up relatively quickly, is the relationship between housing instability, and surviving violence. We live in an area for those of you who might not be familiar with how deeply impactful gentrification has been to our city and the way in displacement as a result of violence. Many survivors were experiencing displacement as a result of violence. And because we live in such a highly gentrified city, trying to find and navigate traditional housing markets were pretty impossible. It's impossible for folks with six figure jobs, it's certainly impossible for folks who are navigating, leaving an abusive relationship. And so that came up across all of our centennial across all the sectors, everyone's like housing, housing, housing, it's really problematic. One of the things then that we learned from our group is that the primary place where survivors would probably go to get housing, if they did not necessarily appraise themselves as survivors is experiencing domestic violence, because that matters a lot. You might not go to a domestic violence shelter or get seek domestic violence programming. If you don't necessarily understand your experience as being abusive. You just know that you have this relationship, the person did a bunch of things, and now you are on the street or are threatened of being on the streets. So we went to the single one of the one of the single points of entry for families who were homeless or are were at risk of being unhoused. And one of the things that practitioners told us is that when survivors went to that space to go get housing through the city, and one of the things that we that they said is that when people go there, they're oftentimes not able to get housing, they're not they don't leave there with any kind of Housing Support. Wow. So that was really difficult for us because we know that that was a primary and the primary source where people go, that they have families of survivors have families. And so we asked like, Well, what do you think is going on right now, like what there's policies in place, there's things in place to help survivors move through that system with a bit more ease, they should have priority. You know, there's at the time, there was this thing that said, of people in the city who were not who didn't have DC residents or didn't have a DC ID, they should still be able to get housing because of the dynamics of violence, as somebody's fleeing violence, they should be able to have access. So there's these two policies in place, people should be able survivors should be able to have high priority, they should be connected to a domestic domestic violence worker inside of the system. And they should not be turned away if they don't have DC residency, right. And we've well, and the anecdotal evidence was that none of that was happening, or that happened very rarely, right? People would be deemed ineligible and not be able to access housing because of multiple things. So that seemed like, okay, that's the point of intervention. For us. That's the place where we want to start to create a study, looking at the screening practices and policies that providers were using in order to determine eligibility for survivors. I give you that long intro. Because the we found maybe two to three things that I think are pretty important. The first is simply about mass, right? So we interviewed people, or we sat in the waiting room of this particular housing system for a year, and we screened about 779 people. And about a third of them stated that the reason why they were coming in to the system was because of an abusive partner, some experience with what we would have identified as violence, right, so that's about 291 people, that tells us a lot, a third is a lot of your population, right? Just in our particular list of the people that we reached out to the days that we went. And up there, we asked for we, you know, we talked to 41 people within that 219 91, who agreed to have a conversation with us about their experience after they went through the screening process. So we met them right before they went in, say, hey, you know, are you eligible? Would you come and talk to us, and then we tried to talk with them within a week of them, to three days of them getting their eligibility termination. And what we found is that only for people, for people who were eligible for violence are eligible for or who were survivors of violence, who had sought immediate support, because they needed housing, got immediately placed meaning into a shelter into any kind of immediate hotel situation, something where they could get immediate housing, about half of the folks we talked to, were deemed ineligible. Most people had to come back to this system, at least two to five times before they got an eligibility determination. Meaning they could go you can have some type of resource in this system from the city. Wow, that was really, I mean, that's a really critical thing to name and say is that when people who are in the city who are eligible for housing services, as survivors, the likelihood that they're going to get the support they need, when they first enter in is extremely low.

Yeah, I mean, you think about just what's going on in those people's lives in the interim, even of those for that you said, two to five visits to determine the eligibility. I mean, there's some really harrowing things that could be going on, I'm sure. And yeah, that's, that's heavy.

Absolutely. Yeah. And it's difficult because they're coming from many have this particular place was the last, like resort for many foods, right? They went to at least two to three other places, formal places, oftentimes, they had stayed with their family and friends they had gone to, they've done everything to try to maintain housing in the city. And the other thing that we found pretty disheartening, was the idea that survivors the ways that providers were engaging with survivors, oftentimes was as if they didn't believe them, or as if they blamed them for the abuse or would just tell them to do things that would actually increase the risk of violence rather than support their safety. So they needed an ask about the violence or didn't believe them when they said or they said, you know, it sounds like you're a survivor. You're not necessary. It's not like you need housing. It just sounds like you. You know that you're surviving violence and we don't really serve people like that, right? So there's this really huge disconnect between the relationship of displacement as a result of violence and the seeking of housing. And then we think about the idea that, even if they do pursue the likelihood that they're going to be deemed eligible for housing and receive some kind of immediate housing support that was incredibly necessary, was low.

Wow. So Liz, why do you think that is that so many workers seem maybe not dismissive, but sort of just not comprehending, I guess the the reality of these individual situations.

Even if I, if I put myself in the shoes of someone who is navigating homelessness with individuals every day, I can see how it's really easy to just be overwhelmed by the sheer need, and the lack of available services. And, and so it means easy to sort of think about and empathize with what it's like to sit in that chair and trying to help. And you can't really solve the problem, right? Because there's just not enough, right? And what you're hearing are horrible stories, and, and what you're trying to do is figure out how to best support them. But you, you know, maybe they need more than what they came with today to qualify for this program, or there. Is this an assumption that the person seems a little bit off? So are they lying to you to try to get access to something and you just start to see all the ways in which maybe this doesn't just quite add up? I do believe that people come to the work with the best of intentions, but in a environment of such scarcity, it just becomes impossible to to meet everybody's need. But I do you know, when I think then again, about what we heard from survivors around how they were treated, and some of their the feelings of being disrespected and not believed and minimized or not even asked, right, if that part to me is not, it's inexcusable. So it's these two realities that I don't know how to wrap my head around them. Yeah. But I know that it's, it's why we do the work, right, is because there's got to be something better.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can't imagine doing that job on a day to day basis, it must be just an incredibly challenging emotionally and psychologically, to make those determinations and to try to do that. And it does speak, I think, to the to the notion that you're you're driving it right, which is that this is a broader. This is not about individuals making these determinations about policy, and this is about broader frameworks of assistance. So yeah, this is obviously really important stuff. And I'm so glad that that your group is doing it. And I want to ask a couple more questions about essentially, how you're conducting this research. And so we've heard a little bit about this incredible, you know, I guess, data set, you could call it that, but it's also an experience, it's kind of experiential, sort of research methodology, right, where you're getting into this setting with I think you said over 700 instances where you're at that moment of the case review, right. So tell us a little bit more about these research methods that you're employing and kind of how you came to adopt these these methods for this particular topic. And, you know, is it is it true that, you know, maybe you need to think differently about methodology in this case than if you were studying maybe other other topics?

Yeah, I love that question. Because, absolutely, I think is the is it to think differently about methods? Absolutely. So we chose to use a qualitative, interpretive thematic analysis, well, a qualitative approach, and then we use an interpreted thematic analysis for our data analysis process. And the reason for that is because there are so few surveys or tools like how do what what is the survey available that would allow for us to understand the incredible complexity of navigating being surviving violence and being unhoused and engaging in the intersection of provider care and housing outcomes? Right, like that is a very difficult, that'd be a very difficult study to design quantitatively. And it's beautiful. It was difficult to design qualitatively, right? When we made a lot of decisions, a lot of methodological points around. decision points around when do we talk to survivors, because the other component is just the type of the symbol, right? We're talking to people who are either actively surviving karma so might still be with their abusive partners, or actively unhoused. Right. So which means that they we might not be able to reach them after they leave this space, right? We're dealing with people who just had this really odd like, potentially negative encounter with a system, right, and likely no place to go after we have engaged with them. So there's all of those are all experiential, like truths about how people are navigating this space and methodological considerations, how do you think about getting the best type of data? What does that look like? In a way that is both trauma informed and survivors answered and culturally relevant and supportive, right? Where do you go? Who do you talk to? Or how do you how do you structure this space in a way that doesn't feel like additionally, traumatizing, right, and get the most accurate and clear data? So there's a lot of decisions that we made together, about and a lot of like iterating and reiterating and making new decisions on what I can share one thing, and then I'll pause, one thing that we initially wanted to do was interview survivors, we had worked with that system, I was telling you about to, like, have a private space inside of the institution. But come the fact without within maybe two, three interviews were like, oh, no, this is not going to work. I just got told that they probably they weren't gonna get housed. And even the space in and of itself was so activating. Right? They were worried they were it was just too much for like, okay, yeah, we can't stay here, they need to, like, leave this place to go somewhere else. Right. And I think that those kinds of we again, we consider them experiential decisions, but they're also methodological decisions, right? How do you ask them? How do you ask questions about where you're gonna go next, when there is no, we don't know, as researchers where people are going to be and they don't know. So. And I also say one other thing, that I think this is good for all research researchers to do. I learned this earlier in my career, we designed an interview guy collaboratively. That's another piece. All of this was participatory. So we designed the interview guide, collaboratively, collaboratively, we talked to survivors and did a cognitive interview, which means Have you heard of this, it means that you ask a question, like, ask that question as you had intended, and then asked people to give me feet, I would ask the survivor. When I asked this question, how did you hear it? How did you understand what I just asked you? What was the what do you think was the intention behind this question? What kind of words came up for you? Right? So you asked them to as a piloting we did also pilot but the cognitive interview really allows for us to make sure that the intention behind our question was aligned with what with the kind of responses we want to get. So that was useful to both. And then we also piloted with three to four people in our population. So there's a lot of things I could go on about.

I definitely can hear that. Yeah, it's I mean, it's, it's remarkable, the degree of thought that needs to go into this particular kind of, of interviewing, and just in general, sort of just contacting this population. I mean, really, that's, that's fascinating. Liz, did you have anything to add on the the methodological front,

I think what was just so eye opening to me, and it sort of shaped my understanding going forward in this work is, we often see victims of domestic violence or survivors as people that have experienced harm. But what what was so different about this research project was seeing them as experts in navigating the systems and, and the just the dignity and respect that comes with that and itself and paying for their time and making sure they had transportation and just, it was such a shift, and how we, in my field really work with survivors, and has shaped our work going forward. So the cross burning that happens through this project cross disciplines was, it was phenomenal.

That's amazing. Everything that both of you are saying resonates so much with me. And in terms of some of some of the thinking that I've done in response to a lot of the guests that have come on the podcast, right? I'm not a qualitative scholar, I do a lot of quantitative research. And a lot of my stuff is sort of large in survey experiments, that kind of thing. And I've learned so much from from this conversation from others, just about this, this notion of collaboratively producing knowledge with alongside right, our research subjects, right, because it's not even really sort of a nomenclature that fits anymore, right? This kind of this kind of approach is to think about how we can again, treat our subjects and heavy quotes as experts in terms of their knowledge of systems that we're only just trying to understand from from a very outside perspective. And so yeah, this is this is, you know, I'm sure I'm not the only one to say, right, this is very cutting edge work and stuff that I think has broad implications for the rest of the social sciences. So really, really valuable, fantastic stuff. And I wanted to ask, you know, on that note, what's next, what are we what can we expect from from this group? I think maybe Liz is as eager to tell us a bit.

What so what we've decided to do really is spend a little bit of time Building on the sort of cross training and collaboration that happens and helping support each other and some of our individual work. So, you know, like you, you take the, the sabbatical or break from the primary purpose and really work on some things that have been coming up for different partners and building our understanding, as we sort of plan. What comes next. I know that there's a lot of, there's a lot of interest in terms of restorative justice, and how that factors into working with people who cause harm and in creating opportunities, aside from the legal system in policing, there's a lot of discussion or, you know, continued discussion on housing. And you know, one of the questions you asked, in around eight, you know, for people providing services in the homeless field, what is it like for them to have to navigate the scarcity of resources? And how does that translate into trauma informed care for them and for the people that they're serving? And so there's just such big beads, really sort of trying to spend some time and figuring out where our passion as a group continues to guide us in honoring our commitments to the survivors who participated in the study?

Okay, you want to add something?

I think that was perfect. Yeah, I agree. I agree

as well. I mean, this, this kind of summative statement about honoring the, you know, lived experience of the people that we're working with, and this research is so important. And, yeah, the the notion that you're going to allow sort of the passion of the group to lead the research inquiry is something that is so critical, and so important. And so I think I've already, you know, if not learned, you know, reinforced so many things that I, in this discussion, hold to be really important for conducting social science research that has high impact. But I also want to remind both of you that, you know, we have many student listeners out there on student listeners who are maybe encountering some of these, some of these terms, some of these ideas, things like cognitive interviewing for the first time. And with that being said, you know, we only have a couple more minutes left, but I wanted to ask you really briefly to just say, and I always ask this of my guests, if you had any advice for students who were sort of coming up through the social science disciplines, thinking about maybe getting inspired by some of the work that you were doing some of the work that some of our other guests were doing, and who are hoping maybe in the future to go pro, as I say, in the social sciences, what kind of words of wisdom of guidance Could you could you give them knowing full well already that I think that any student listeners, that's that's heard this, this interview has probably gained a lot already, any any additional words of wisdom for our students?

Well, I can just add, you know, I'm not coming from the discipline or the field. But what I, what I learned from this project in this collaboration, and generally speaking, is that it's in group conversations where you get to test out an idea and really get insight and perspective from other people. So talk to people, you don't have to commit to anything, you don't have to divulge your plan or your approach or, you know, I'm not sure what proprietary things factor into, you know, being a student, but the greatest outcomes often come when you have the most input. And so just email professor, talk to your peers, you know, have coffee with some of the other students in your in your class. And don't be afraid to sort of workshop, an idea with people who are navigating some more questions.

So important. Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah, absolutely. I think the other thing is that research is research. And the process of creating data, I think, is one of the most artistic, creative processes that we have. So just because you don't see what you want to do doesn't mean that you can't do it, how you want to do it, right. So I think we really need I think science is one of those really incredible places where, and creating science and working with people to create data is a space where like, there's millions of possibilities to do this work. And so yeah, I want to I really want to encourage people to see, particularly students to know that if you are interested in doing research, we are with you, like I think we need like we really need people who think big, who think expansively and who think in different ways to be interested and do it because there's lots of different ways to there's like, lots of different ways to do this. To have the kind of impact and things that you want to have. So we need you. And we need the way that you want to do it.

Fantastic inspiration. I'm galvanized, I'm ready to go and get out there in the field and, and do research of my own now. Thanks to thanks to this. Thanks to both of you. I really, really appreciate you taking the time. I wish that we could talk all day. We'll have to let you go here but we'll definitely have you back. Got the pod at some point to hear more about some of the fantastic work that your collective is doing in the future. It's actually been cured lazy and less odongo. Thank you again so much for appearing.

Thank you. Thank you

Campus Connection computes the Nexium campus connections, campus connections.

Now it's time for campus connections, a part of the podcast where we connect today's featured content as always to the work of others at UMBC. Our intern Alex Andrews is back from a restorative winter break to bring us yet another relevant and timely connection.

Take it away, Alex. Thanks, Dr. Anson. This week for campus connections, we'll be highlighting anger reactivity and treatment adherence among court mandated partner violent men. It's quite a mouthful, but it's a study from the UMBC psychology department written by John percent here in 2009. This study used a group of men who were court mandated domestic abusers. These men were put into simulated situations with the goal of measuring their anger and irritability to see if it was associated with their physical and or psychological abuse in the past. The study actually even went a step further to find out if those who reported more anger were less likely to show up for more court appointed treatment. And as it turned out, not only would that be true, but those who showed more and more anger had a greater history of abuse. That's all for this campus connection. Back to you, Dr. Anson.

Thanks again, Alex for that great summary. Just a reminder, Alex writes and produces these segments, and as always, we're so grateful for his excellent work on the pod. Join us next time for yet another exciting update from the world of UMBC social science. Until then, keep questioning. Retrieving the Social Sciences is a production of the UMBC Center for Social Science Scholarship. Our director is Dr. Christine Mallinson, our Associate Director is Dr. Felipe Filomeno, aAnd our production intern is Alex Andrews. Our theme music was composed and recorded by D'Juan Moreland. Find out more about CS3 at socialscience.umbc.edu and make sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube where you can find full video recordings of recent CS3events. Until next time, keep questioning