The San Diego Navy experiment: an assessment of interventions for men who assault their wives

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Criminology
• Domestic Violence Research

Background:

• Domestic violence, specifically physical assault by servicemen against their wives, is a significant societal issue requiring effective intervention strategies.
• Previous interventions have shown varying degrees of success, necessitating further research into effective treatment modalities for perpetrators.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the effectiveness of three distinct 12-month interventions for servicemen with a history of physically assaulting their wives.
• To compare the outcomes of cognitive-behavioral interventions in a men's group and a conjoint group against a rigorously monitored group and a control group.

Main Methods:

• A randomized controlled trial involving 861 couples where the male partner had physically assaulted his wife.
• Participants were assigned to four groups: men's group, conjoint group, rigorously monitored group, and a control group.
• Cognitive-behavioral interventions were applied to the men's and conjoint groups, with outcome data collected from both perpetrators and victims over an 18-month period.

Main Results:

• Statistical analyses indicated no significant differences in outcomes across the experimental groups.
• The implemented cognitive-behavioral interventions did not demonstrate a statistically significant advantage over the control or rigorously monitored groups in reducing domestic violence.

Conclusions:

• The study's findings suggest that the tested cognitive-behavioral interventions, as implemented, were not significantly more effective than control conditions for servicemen who physically assaulted their wives.
• Further research is needed to explore alternative or modified intervention strategies for this population.