Abstract:
To date, there is limited empirical evidence regarding the effectiveness of domestic violence shelters, for obvious ethical reasons. It would not be feasible nor ethical to randomly assign survivors into shelters, and those studies that have compared women who do and do not use shelters are severely limited by the fact that these two groups of women differ on many other variables other than shelter use (e.g., income level, education level, access to other options, severity of abuse). It is also difficult to examine the impact of “shelter” on women’s lives because there are so many services and programs offered within most shelters (e.g., support groups, advocacy, children’s programs). If women report the shelter experience as being helpful, therefore, it is not always clear what aspects of the experience contribute to that assessment. These difficulties notwithstanding, this paper examines the empirical studies of shelter effectiveness in the lives of abused women. This review includes studies of “shelter” in general, and does not address the specific programs offered within shelter (e.g., support groups, children’s programs), which are the subject of separate research summaries. (Author Text)