1 - (SYM 12) From Research to Practice: How Process-based Findings Can Strengthen IPV Treatment Development and Implementation

Background:  A significant number of men mandated to intimate partner violence (IPV) intervention programs are fathers who continue to be involved in the lives of non-offending parents and children. The standard of care, the “Batterer Intervention Program (BIP),” is a group- intervention with mixed support. A newly developed treatment, Fathers for Change (F4C), has demonstrated potential. F4C is an 18-session treatment with individual and family sessions that focus on emotion regulation and reflective functioning. In this trial, BIP was delivered in 18 individual sessions. Both treatments significantly reduced IPV and emotion dysregulation, with large effect sizes. How these treatments work remains unclear.  

Methods: Sixty fathers with a recent history of IPV were randomly assigned to receive F4C (n = 30) or BIP (n = 30). Outcome measures were self-report of IPV (Abusive Behavior Inventory: ABI) and emotion regulation (Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale: DERS). The CHANGE, a coding system of therapeutic change processes, was used to code recordings of the individual sessions from F4C and sessions from the same period in BIP.

Results: Linear regression analyses were conducted using multiple-group analysis in SEM. Latent change scores of ABI and DERS were separately regressed on average levels of the CHANGE variables: avoidance, rigidity, processing (reflective functioning), and self-efficacy (emotion regulation). In F4C, more avoidance (B = 6.44, p < .001) and self-efficacy (B = 6.71, p = .001) predicted more IPV, and more rigidity (B = -6.88, p < .001) and processing (B = -6.72, p = .002) predicted less IPV at posttreatment. Rigidity was also correlated with more processing (r = .50). In BIP, there were no significant predictors of IPV. In both conditions, more rigidity (F4C: B = 5.90, p = .03; BIP: B = 5.14, p = .03) predicted worse emotion regulation. In F4C only, more processing (B =- 7.54, p = .01) predicted better emotion regulation.  

Conclusion: Processing was important in F4C, predicting improvement in both IPV and emotion regulation, whereas the opposite, avoidance, predicted worse IPV outcomes. Rigidity was an important predictor of less change in emotion regulation in both conditions, but in F4C, rigidity was also associated with more processing, a key predictor of positive outcomes. Surprisingly, self-efficacy predicted less change in IPV in F4C, perhaps because it captures maladaptive aspects of control over others. Together, these findings highlight potential intervention targets that can guide further development of IPV treatments.