[acb-hsp] Cultural Models of DV

[J.Rayl]

Cultural Models of Domestic Violence: Perspectives of Social Work and Anthropology

Students.

by Cyleste C. Collins , William W. Dressier

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IS A pervasive social problem that can demand attention from a

variety of social service providers (see Pyles, 2006; Pyles & Postmus, 2004; Tjaden

& Thoennes, 2000). Social workers who come into contact with families who are affected

by domestic violence can provide these families with hope by linking them with important

services. Some research has found, however, that social workers hold biases and stereotypes

about domestic violence (Danis & Lockhart, 2003; Ross & Glisson, 1991), and that

they frequently fail to provide necessary services to victims (Eisikovits & Buchbinder,

1996; Kok, 2001). Research has suggested that it is important to identify workers'

ideas about the causes of and appropriate treatment for domestic violence in tackling

these issues (Davis, 1984; Davis & Carlson, 1981). The aim of this article is to

examine the cultural models of domestic violence shared by social work students and

other social science students and to introduce methods with which to elicit and examine

those cultural models.

Even when victims of domestic violence do not seek shelter or other services from

domestic violence agencies, they often become engaged with the social welfare system

in a number of other ways, including when they need financial and other types of

assistance (Brandwein, 1999; Raphael, 2001), or are faced with questions about the

welfare of their children (Edleson, 1999; Kohl, Edleson, English, & Barth, 2005;

Postmus & Ortega, 2005). Although recent progress in social policy has increased

funding for and awareness of domestic violence, research continues to indicate that

victims of domestic violence encounter a number of barriers in their interactions

with human service professionals.

Research has found that even when domestic violence victims disclose their abuse

status to their caseworkers, they often feel uncomfortable doing so (Busch & Wolfer,

2002; Saunders, Holter, Pahl, Tolman, & Kenna, 2005). Some welfare workers inappropriately

screen (Levin, 2001; Postmus, 2000; Postmus, 2004; Owens-Manly, 1999) or otherwise

fail to identify clients eligible for accessing the Family Violence Option (McNutt,

Carlson, Rose, & Robinson, 2002) or similar programs that allow domestic violence

victims to obtain waivers for time limits and other restrictions enacted under the

Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (P. L. 104-193).

Welfare workers also tend to underestimate the numbers of victims that apply for

assistance (Kok, 2001) and sometimes provide inappropriate services when encountering

victims (Brandwein, 1999). Some welfare offices have addressed this problem by placing

domestic violence advocates in welfare offices and training staff to be aware of

the barriers that victims of domestic violence face. These programs have met with

varying levels of success (Kok, 2001), but are steps in the right direction. As professionals

become educated about domestic violence, victims' challenges in accessing the services

to which they are entitled should decrease.

Improving victims' access to services requires better understanding how professionals

think about and approach domestic violence cases. One way to investigate this is

to ask whether particular groups of professionals share ideas, ideas that might have

been formulated on the basis of having undergone common training and therefore result

in a professional culture. Answering such questions requires that we deconstruct

the concept of culture. Recent research has pointed out the problematic nature of

social work's usage of the term "culture" (see Park, 2005). Culture has been commonly

understood in social work and other fields to be an all-encompassing term (D'Andrade,

1999), sometimes standing in for racial and ethnic characteristics (e.g., Hispanic

culture), as well as aspects of the environment (e.g., office culture) (Park, 2005).

Common to these descriptions of culture is the idea of sharing. For more than 100

years, anthropologists have debated the definition of culture, and in recent years,

have developed techniques for systematically assessing it. Many cognitive anthropologists

have come to agree that culture is best defined as shared knowledge among individuals

in a group (D'Andrade, 1984; Shore, 1996). Such a definition allows for greater specificity

in narrowing down, operationally defining, and measuring elements of culture. In

this study, techniques traditionally employed in cognitive anthropology are used

to identify the specific ways social work students think about domestic violence.

Cultural Models and Cognitive Anthropology

Anthropologists have theorized that cultural knowledge consists of a collection of

models, or a set of interlocking schemas that guide individuals in interpreting and

responding to their environments (D'Andrade, 1984). Each individual's model is thought

to be composed of not only individual biographical and idiosyncratic information,

but also that which is culturally transmitted, or learned, and therefore shared with

other members of the cultural group (Shore, 1996). Thus, although sharing is central

to understanding culture, this framework also accounts for individuality and thus,

intracultural diversity (i.e., variability in shared cultural models within a social

group) (Pelto & Pelto, 1975).

To examine the structure of cultural models, cognitive anthropologists often employ

techniques that avoid making assumptions about the content of any given cultural

model. Instead, emergent techniques are used to elicit such content from a culture's

participants. Some of the research methods drawn on to evoke such content are free

listing, constrained and unconstrained pile sorts, ranking, and rating tasks (Weller

& Romney, 1988). These techniques build on one another and allow researchers to gather

progressively more structured information about how participants think about the

given domain of inquiry. The first phase, "free listing," is an open-ended technique

in which participants respond to the researcher's prompt, generating a list of ideas

about the cultural domain in their own words. The second phase, "pile sorting," requires

participants to organize their thinking systematically by creating categories of

meaning. The final stages of rating and ranking tasks allow the researcher to adopt

sophisticated analytic techniques to examine the data quantitatively, including cultural

consensus analysis. Cultural consensus analysis evaluates the extent to which the

data are considered cultural data, that is, shared, or are simply unique to an individual.

The aim of all these techniques is to describe cultural meaning in the terms the

members of a social group themselves use, and not to impose the understanding of

the researcher on that group.

Cultural Consensus Analysis

The cultural consensus model, conceptualized by Romney, Weller, and Batchelder (1986)

assumes that the content of cultural models can be determined by systematically interviewing

participants. Cultural consensus analysis is a factor analytic-type technique that

supplies three sets of results. First, it extracts the eigenvalues of a subject-by-subject

correlation matrix; if the ratio of the first-to-the-second eigenvalue is sufficiently

large (interpreted using a rule of thumb--that the ratio of the first factor to the

second is at least 3.0), this indicates that there is sufficient sharing among individuals

to conclude that they are using the same cultural model. Second, each individual's

cultural competence is calculated, evaluating each person's level of sharing with

the group model. Calculating a cultural competence coefficient enables the researcher

to identify the "experts" in the group (i.e., those whose knowledge is closest to

the group's aggregated or "average" knowledge). Finally, cultural consensus analysis

reveals what is sometimes referred to as the cultural answer key, that discloses

what the culturally agreed-on, or "correct" answers were, or what the group members

agreed were the components of the culture.

Consensus analysis is often performed using ANTHROPAC software (Borgatti, 1988).

It is important to note that these analyses are not subject to the usual sample size

requirements and assumptions of statistical analysis. In fact, many of these, such

as the assumption of independence of observations, are considered inappropriate for

cultural data, in which cultural participants are specifically assumed to share beliefs.

Tests of violations of such assumptions have indicated that the use of small sample

sizes does not jeopardize the use of statistics and subsequent interpretation of

cultural data (Handwerker, Hatcherson, & Herbert, 1997).

Important insights about the connections between culture, health, and health behavior

(Chavez, Hubbell, McMullin, Martinez, & Mishra, 1995; Chavez, McMullin, Mishra, &

Hubbel, 2001; Dressier, Dos Santos, & Balieiro, 1996), culture and poverty, and culture

and its effects on organizations (Caulkins & Hyatt, 1999; Jaskyte & Dressier, 2004)

have been gained using the cultural consensus model. Until now, however, the model

has not been applied to domestic violence research, and has been rarely used in social

work.

Purpose of the Study

This study sought to identify elements of students' cultural models of domestic violence,

to examine the structure of these models, and to evaluate the degree to which a cultural

model of domestic violence is shared among them. Examining social work students while

they are undergoing training to become human service professionals provided a useful

point of entry in understanding the extent to which social work training shapes their

beliefs, as well as similarities and differences in how human service professionals

might define and respond to domestic violence. A group of anthropology students served

as a comparison group, under the assumption that, as social science students, anthropology

students would have some understanding of domestic violence, but that their understandings

would not be codified the way that social work students' understandings would be,

given their status as service providers-in-training.

The study incorporated a framework for examining attitudes and beliefs to determine

whether they constitute cultural models that has been little used in social work

research, but has great potential for improving the understanding and measurement

of person-in-environment The concept of cultural models provides for a more detailed

and person-focused analysis of domestic violence attitudes than has been previously

attempted, and ultimately will provide insight into the ways in which social work

education, policy and practice regarding domestic violence can be improved.

Method

Consistent with cognitive anthropology methodology, a series of standardized data

collection techniques were used to examine participants' cultural models. These procedures

are described in detail elsewhere (Weller & Romney, 1988), but focus on eliciting

participants' beliefs about the causes of domestic violence. Data were collected

in three phases. Because each stage of the data collection involved a unique set

of participants, techniques, and analysis, each will be discussed as a separate study.

Only minimal descriptive information was collected from participants until the third

phase of the research, when demographic characteristics became important issues in

the analysis.

Phase 1: Eliciting Elements of the Domain

Participants and procedure. In the first phase of the research, participants generated

the terms associated with domestic violence through free listing. The sample consisted

of 25 advanced-standing social work students enrolled in a graduate level research

course, all but one of whom was female. Participants were asked to list as many causes

of domestic violence that they could think of, and write them on a blank sheet of

paper.

Analysis. Participants listed a total of 29 different causes of domestic violence

(see Table 1). One phrase, "poor education on appropriate behavior" was dropped because

of its wordiness and lack of clarity, and a total of 28 terms were retained for analysis

and use in subsequent phases of the research. The 28 items were analyzed to determine

which terms participants mentioned most frequently, and which were most salient (i.e.,

how early in students' lists they appeared, indicating the terms' primacy) (see Table

1). The analysis indicated that financial difficulties, substance abuse, having witnessed

abuse, stress, and power were both the five most often mentioned and most salient

causes (those items that are listed earliest), with more than 50% of the participants

listing these terms.

Phase 2: identifying the Semantic Structure of the Domain

Participants and procedure. In the second phase of the study, a total of 40 students

participated in the research. Of these, 24 were graduate-level social work students

enrolled in a research course, and 16 were upper-division and graduate students enrolled

in an anthropology course. Using the 28 terms generated from participants in the

first phase of the research, participants in the second phase completed an unconstrained

pile sort to examine how they organized their ideas about domestic violence. Participants

were told that the terms they would sort were various potential causes of domestic

violence (which primed them to categorize on this basis), and were told to place

terms they believed were similar into piles together. Participants were told that

they could make as many or as few piles as they liked. Once the terms were sorted,

the researcher conducted open-ended group interviews with the participants, in which

they were asked to give a name or theme to each of their piles that would explain

why they had placed particular terms together in these respective piles.

Analysis. Pile-sort data were submitted to multidimensional scaling (MDS) techniques

to identify the possible dimensions participants used in classifying the domestic

violence terms (Hair, Anderson, Tatham, & Black, 1996; Kruskal & Wish, 1978). MDS

transforms proximity data (i.e., ratings of similarity) to extract a visual picture

of participants' groupings of terms. Stress values in MDS assess the goodness of

fit of a given dimensional solution; the higher the stress value, the poorer the

solution's fit. In other words, a high stress value (greater than 0.20) indicates

that the "mapped" MDS poorly represents the similarities calculated in the original

similarity matrix. A two-dimensional solution yielded stress values below 0.20 for

the separate analyses of social work and anthropology students, as well as for their

merged data. == Cluster analysis was performed next to identify specific groupings

within the MDS boundaries (Hair et al., 1996). Generally, participants tended to

group together items that were relevant to individual issues (e.g., depression, unhappiness,

selfishness, substance abuse, mental illness). Other groups included personal history/experiences

(including having been abused and having witnessed abuse), and issues external to

the individual (e.g., money, work stress, low level of education). The relationships

between the terms in the MDS and cluster analysis are represented in two dimensions

in Figure 1.

Phase 3: Examining Dimensions of Meaning

Participants and procedure. A total of 51 students participated in the rating / ranking

phase of the research. Of these, 34 were master's-level social work students enrolled

in a research course, and 17 were a mix of graduate and undergraduate students (11

graduates, 6 undergraduate) enrolled in a graduate-level anthropology course. The

participants were mostly White (85.7%) and female (74.5%). Several significant differences

were found between the student groups with regard to their demographic characteristics.

More social work students (55.9%) reported having worked full-time in a human service

agency (compared to 0% of anthropology students; [chi square](1, n=51)=15.14, p <.001),

social work students were significantly older (M=29.7, SD=9.1) than the anthropology

students (M=23.2, SD=4.3), t(48)=2.80, p <.001), and because all social work students

were graduate students but only one third of anthropology students were, there was

also a significant difference between the participants on the basis of class level.

([chi square](2(1, n=50)= 29.97, p <.001).

Four dimensions of meaning were taken from the pile sorts and their interviews for

use in the third phase of the study. First, because it is a basic evaluative dimension,

participants were asked to rank the importance of the causes of domestic violence.

Participants ranked the terms from most to least important, where the most important

cause was given a score of one, and the least important, a score of 28. Next, participants

had indicated in interviews and in their pile-sort data that they believed some terms

went together because they were either "inside" or "outside" of the victim or perpetrator.

These were referred to in the third phase of the research as causes that were "internal

and external" to the individual, and were evaluated on a 5-point Likert-type scale,

where 1=internal, and 5= external. Other participants had noted that they had placed

items in the same pile because the cause was one that could be changed. Thus, the

third dimension was labeled "amenability to change," and was evaluated on a 5-point

Likert-type scale on which 1=not amenable to change, and 5=highly amenable to change.

Finally, because several items were mentioned that referred to mental health, the

fourth dimension participants evaluated was "mental health issues." This dimension

was evaluated using a simple 1=yes/0=no choice format.

Analysis. The data analysis was conducted in two phases. First, cultural consensus

analyses were performed separately on each student group to determine the extent

to which each shared a model of domestic violence causes, and then on the entire

sample's data to determine whether all students shared a model. Findings from the

separate consensus analyses of the social work students revealed that they did, in

fact, share a model of the causes of domestic violence on all four dimensions of

meaning. Anthropology students, however, shared a model on only two dimensions: amenability

to change and the importance of the domestic violence cause. The merged data revealed

a pattern that mirrored the anthropology-only analysis (see Table 2); social work

students and anthropology students shared a model on the dimensions of amenability

to change and importance, but not on the internality / externality of the causes

or whether they were mental health issues. On the internal/external dimension and

mental health issues dimension, social work students' levels of cultural competence

were both less variable and higher overall than that of anthropology students. In

fact, an examination of the error bars on these two dimensions, sorted by group,

demonstrated that on the internal/external dimension, social work and anthropology

students' competence levels overlapped very little, and on the mental health dimension,

the two groups did not overlap at all. These findings further emphasize the distinctiveness

of the two groups of students. Table 3 is a brief summary of the content of the cultural

models--only the five highest-and lowest-ranked and rated terms on each dimension

are listed except for mental health. The mental health issue column lists examples

of terms participants evaluated as being mental health issues and ones that they

did not.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Following the consensus analysis, PROFIT (PROperty-FITting) analysis (Carroll & Chang,

1964; Kruskal & Wish, 1978) was performed to connect the consensus results with the

MDS representation of the similarities of the pile-sort terms, by determining whether

participants actually used the identified dimensions in their pile-sort ratings of

the terms' similarity. PROFIT analysis assumes that data are distributed linearly

and increase monotonically (Borgatti, 1994), as in regression analysis. The coordinates

of the MDS are the independent variables in a regression analysis performed in PROFIT,

and the attributes, derived from the consensus analysis answer key, are the dependent

variables (Borgatti, 1996). PROFIT analysis yields several important pieces of information.

First, the multiple R explains the overall measure of fit of a given attribute; a

multiple R closer to 1.0 indicates a better fit. Next, coordinates are given that

represent the head of an arrow of a vector that will run through the multidimensional

space. This vector evaluates how well the attributes represented the pile-sort data.

In the social work students' data the multiple R's for three of the four dimensions

of meaning were greater than .75 (see Table 4). For anthropology students, however,

the multiple R's were significant for only two dimensions: amenability to change

and importance, consistent with the consensus analysis findings. Thus, the PROFIT

analysis suggests that social work students made use of three of the four dimensions

in their pile sorts, but only the amenability to change dimension and the importance

ranking dimensions were used by anthropology students. Figure 2 displays the results

of the PROFIT analysis on the MDS graph.

Dimension independence. The next step in the analysis was performed to determine

the different dimensions' relationships to each other. The answer keys were correlated

to test the extent to which the dimensions were independent of one another. The correlations

for anthropology and social work students' answer keys mirrored each other, and so

will be discussed in general terms. The internal/ external dimension was unrelated

to both importance and amenability to change, but was moderately negatively related

to mental health (r=-.39 for social work, r=.46 for anthropology). Meanwhile, mental

health was somewhat negatively related to amenability to change (r=-.26 for social

work r=-.22 for anthropology) and importance (r=-.22 for social work r=-.28 for anthropology),

but there was a moderately positive correlation between importance and amenability

to change (r=.52 for social work, r=.77 for anthropology). None of these correlations

are strong enough to threaten the independence of the dimensions, but do point out

some interesting relationships among them. Specifically, terms that were ranked as

most important were rated as less amenable to change and were likely to be evaluated

as mental health issues (recall that a ranking of 1 in importance indicates high

importance), and terms that were considered mental health issues were rated as less

amenable to change, and more as internal causes of domestic violence.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Examining the distribution of sharing. The next step in the analysis was to examine

how sharing in the sample was distributed, that is, whether there were characteristics

other than student group that predicted sharing. Significant demographic characteristics

of the sample--gender, age, year in school, and having worked full-time in a human

service agency--were entered into multivariate GLM analyses as covariates, using

competence coefficients from each of the four merged data sets as the dependent variables,

and student type as the main independent variable (see Table 5). Findings revealed

a significant main effect of gender on the importance dimension; being female predicted

having significantly higher competence, and a significant main effect of student

type for the internal/external dimension; social work students had higher competence.

The analysis of the amenability to change dimension revealed a significant main effect

of working in a human service agency; students who had not worked in a human service

agency had significantly higher competence. On the mental health dimension, no variables

exerted significant main effects, but student type was marginally significant (p=.09),

and reached traditional levels of significance when nonsignificant variables were

dropped from the model, with social work students demonstrating higher competence

than anthropology students on this dimension. While these findings are interesting

and consistent with previous analyses, the low R2 values on each of the dimensions'

models suggest there are factors that remain unaccounted for, so the results should

be interpreted with some caution.

Discussion

This study was undertaken to examine and compare cultural models of domestic violence

of social work and anthropology students. The research employed a new and person-focused

framework to gain an understanding of how social work education prepares students

to deal with domestic violence. The findings represent a significant step toward

understanding the development and maintenance of human service professionals' beliefs

about domestic violence, with the ultimate goal of improving the delivery of services

and eliminating barriers victims face. The data collection worked to uncover participants'

beliefs about the causes of domestic violence because service providers' beliefs

about the cause of a person's predicament tend to predict their responses to that

person (Corrigan & Watson, 2003). Identifying such beliefs could, in turn, help explain

some of the difficulties domestic violence victims report in dealing with service

providers.

A Cultural Model of Domestic Violence

The evidence in this study is consistent with the notion that anthropology and social

work students share a cultural model of domestic violence, but that social work students

make finer gradations among some elements of that model. The findings indicated that

on the dimensions of importance and amenability to change, social work and anthropology

students demonstrated strong agreement, providing evidence for the existence of a

folk model of domestic violence. Folk models are "tacit forms of knowledge" that

are "more conservative than scientific theories and are more resistant (though not

completely resistant) to empirical disconfirmation" (Shore, 1996, p. 65), shared

among individuals, and implicit (D'Andrade, 1987). As noted earlier in this article,

simple sharing of particular ideas is only one piece of the cultural model puzzle;

rather, the extent of sharing and departures from that sharing (intracultural diversity)

are also important. Specifically, in this study, two background characteristics,

having experience in a human service agency, and gender, moderated the extent to

which the students shared ideas on amenability to change and importance.

That those participants who had not worked full-time in a human service agency had

the highest levels of agreement on the amenability to change dimension explicitly

points to the relevance of nonexpert knowledge (i.e., folk knowledge) in interpreting

the possibility of change in domestic violence situations. It may be that those with

experiences in human service agencies recognize either a greater or lesser number

of possibilities for intervention effectiveness. The finding that women demonstrated

more agreement on the importance dimension is consistent with previous domestic violence

research that has found gender differences in attitudes (see Worden & Carlson, 2005;

Carlson & Worden, 2005), but should be interpreted with caution since few men participated

in this study. Here, abuse history, having witnessed abuse, and having abused others

were considered to be both the most important causes of domestic violence and also

the causes least amenable to change, suggesting that the students were skeptical

about the efficacy of domestic violence interventions.

A Professionally Elaborated Model of Domestic Violence

While this study's findings indicated that social work and anthropology students

share a folk model of domestic violence, they also indicated that social work students'

understanding was unique, based on their consensus on two dimensions: (1) the extent

to which they thought causes of domestic violence are internal or external to the

individual, and (2) whether they believed those causes are mental health issues.

Social work students also used these dimensions in explaining their categorizations

of domestic violence causes in a way anthropology students did not. Such a unique

understanding might be understood as social work students' making finer distinctions,

or elaborating on elements of the folk model.

In the course of their education and training, social work students become attuned

to aspects of the interaction between a person and his or her environment, aspects

that are likely to include understandings of mental health issues, and issues that

are internal to the individual (i.e., contributed by the person), as well as those

that are considered external but still part of the person's environment. Social work

students' training is undertaken in the context of the classroom and "book learning,"

as well as through learning and practicing clinical skills. Thus, it is logical that

social workers might have a more refined understanding of the relevance of mental

health and the internality/externality of domestic violence issues. Human behavior

in the social environment, a core course in social work curricula, focuses explicitly

on factors, both internal (in the individual) and external (in the environment) as

causes of behavior. At the same time, many social work programs offer course electives

in psychopathology and mental health, offer concentrations in mental health, and

infuse mental-health concepts into their generalist coursework. With these considerations

in mind, it might not be surprising to find that social work students share ideas

on particular dimensions of meaning.

It is tempting to conclude, based on these findings, that this research has revealed

a unique professional cultural model of domestic violence among social-workers-in-training.

A few issues must be considered before such a conclusion can be drawn, however. First,

a cultural model is a complex structure, composed of a network of schematized representations.

As such, capturing that model by measuring only a few dimensions of an issue as multifaceted

as domestic violence is probably unrealistic. Second, the fact that all the student

participants shared understandings on particular elements of the model indicates

that social work and anthropology students' understandings were not completely different.

This might not be surprising because both were students in the social sciences and

therefore could share ideas on that basis. Third, because the social work students

had not yet received their professional degrees, it is unclear whether the model

applies to professionals in practice. The social work students' understandings might

be better described as elaborations of a folk model of domestic violence that could

either be the result of their professional training, or the folk model could be a

simplified version of a professional model. Future research on the models employed

by professional social workers would be well-positioned to clarify this issue.

The existence of distinct professional models of domestic violence is certainly plausible,

given different professionals' disagreements about the causes and appropriate handling

of domestic violence cases (Davis, 1987), even while the mechanisms by which such

a model exerts its influence remain unclear. Little research has been conducted on

social workers' professional socialization (Barretti, 2004), and thus how specific

domestic violence education and training are manifested in practice is uncertain

(Tower, 2003). It is important to note, too, that even if social work students share

ideas about domestic violence as a result of their social work education, such sharing

is not entirely unproblematic. Specifically, Danis and Lockhart (2003) have noted

that when social workers focus on individual and mental health issues as causes of

domestic violence, they risk engaging in victim-blaming behaviors and further traumatizing

their clients. To avoid this, researchers have suggested that it might be useful

to integrate domestic violence education into practice and core courses in the social

work curriculum (see Begun, 1999; O'Keefe & Mennen, 1998).

Strengths, Limitations, and Directions for Future Research

This study is one of the first to employ the cultural consensus model to understanding

the effects of social work education on students, and as such, works to improve the

social work research knowledge base on the subject of culture. The study is also

the first of its kind to use the cultural consensus model in studying domestic violence,

and thus makes a significant contribution to the literature in the area. The cultural

consensus model, a unique, theory-centered approach, is a natural fit for social

work because of its focus on the person-in-environment and use of open-ended participant-centered

methodology. This study, consistent with the methodological techniques of cognitive

anthropology, used a mixed-methods approach in achieving its goals, allowing stronger

conclusions to be drawn (Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2003).

While the findings of the research are provocative and suggest that social work education

has a unique impact on the beliefs of its students, the study findings should be

interpreted cautiously. The comparison group of anthropology students was small and

heterogeneous (their class levels were mixed), and the social work and anthropology

group sample sizes were unequal. Before we can conclude that social work uniquely

influences its students' cultural models, future research should investigate the

models of students from a number of different fields, including a variety of professional

programs, the sciences, and liberal arts fields. Such research would also lend more

credence to the existence of a folk model of domestic violence. This study should

also be replicated in other areas of the country and with larger sample sizes to

improve its generalizability.

Other limitations to this research should be noted. First, anthropology students

did not complete separate free lists of domestic violence causes; instead, they worked

from those generated by the social work students. Thus, there is no way to know whether

anthropology students were working simply within a social work framework or whether

they would have generated different terms altogether. Second, background characteristics

were not collected at every stage of the research. Although such data were not used

in analysis until the final phase (and therefore not collected until then), they

might have been useful to better understand the background of those completing the

earlier stages of the study. Finally, information about students" exposure to domestic

violence course content or personal experiences with domestic violence was not collected.

Previous research suggests that this is an important consideration in fully understanding

how people conceptualize and deal with domestic violence (see Collins, 2005; Goldblatt

& Buchbinder, 2003; Nabi & Homer, 2001), and should be included in future research.

An additional issue with these data concerns the perpetual chicken-and-egg problem;

that is, it is unclear whether students who enter social work programs are different

upon program entry, or whether their social work education shapes their attitudes

and beliefs. Recent research has begun to uncover the special influence social work

education has on students. One study examined students at the beginning and the end

of their social work education and found that social work education influences attitudes

toward women (Black 1994). Future research replicating this study could sort out

this dilemma by examining students at different points in their social work education;

that is, measuring students' beliefs at both the beginning and the end of their professional

education. Such a study would provide insight into the contribution social work education

makes to its students' professional development.

If future research finds unique cultural models among social work students, it will

be important to identify the particular aspects of social work education that facilitate

the formation and maintenance of such a model. The developmental trajectory of such

models also needs to be addressed, as well as the extent to which they are amenable

to change through training. This issue is especially important to programs seeking

to improve services to domestic violence victims and to remove barriers to service.

Conclusion

This study's use of a new method of studying attitudes and beliefs provides significant

hope for better understanding the problems domestic violence victims encounter in

their interactions with social service professionals. Specifically, identifying how

professionals-in-training conceptualize and respond to domestic violence should help

lead to educational models that improve service delivery. Such changes would assist

victims of domestic violence and their families in rebuilding their lives, preventing

social service systems and the professionals who work in them from being hindrances

to progress.

Associate Professor of Social Work Stephen F. Austin State University Nacogdoches,

Texas. The associate professor will teach undergraduate and graduate courses in the

B.S.W. and M.S.W. programs, advise students, participate in university, school and

community areas, and in scholarly activity. Teaching expertise required in two of

the following areas: human behavior and the social environment, advanced generalist

practice, social policy, social research, multicultural issues, rural social work,

or field education. Minimum teaching experience required is two years, required Ph.D.

in Social Work. This is a full-time, tenure-track faculty, nine-month position. Estimated

start date: 9/1/08. Salary: $53,275. Application information, submit a letter of

interest, resume, transcripts and three letters of recommendation to: Glenda Herrington,

Department of Human Resources, Stephen F. Austin State University, P.O. Box 13039,

201 Austin, Nacogdoches, TX 75962 (936)468-2002, gherrington at sfasu.edu

Accepted: 06/07

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Cyleste C. Collins

Case Western Reserve University

William W. Dressier

University of Alabama

Cyleste C. Collins is research assistant professor with the Center on Urban Poverty

& Community Development at Case Western Reserve University. William W. Dressier is

professor at the University of Alabama.

Address correspondence to Cyleste C. Collins, Center on Urban Poverty & Community

Development, Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University,

10900 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44106-7164; e-mail: ccc17 at case.edu.

TABLE 1. Free-List of Causes of Domestic Violence as Reported by Social

 Work Students (N=25), by Frequency and Salience

 Mention % Salience

 Item Frequency Mentioned

 Financial difficulties 19 76 .539

 Substance abuse 18 72 .479

 Having witnessed abuse 17 68 .398

 Stress 14 56 .346

 Power 13 52 .298

 Anger 10 40 .181

 Having been abused 7 28 .120

 Low self-esteem 7 28 .093

 Work-related stress 7 28 .182

 Family-related stress 6 24 .151

 Jealousy 6 24 .176

 Lack of control 5 20 .087

 Mental illness 5 20 .084

 Unemployment 5 20 .136

 History of abuse 4 16 .094

 Low education level 3 12 .066

 Isolation 3 12 .054

 Poor communication 3 12 .077

 Infidelity 3 12 .059

 The culture of violence 3 12 .049

 Poor coping skills 2 8 .021

 Lack of respect for partner 2 8 .028

 Marital problems 2 8 .071

 Selfishness 1 4 .023

 Unstable living conditions 1 4 .007

 Unhappiness 1 4 .021

 Anxiety 1 4 .010

 Depression 1 4 .014

 TABLE 2. Cultural Consensus Analysis for Social Work Students,

 Anthropology Students, and Full Sample: Levels of Agreement

 (Cultural Competence) on Four Dimensions of Meaning

 Cultural

 Competence

 Eigenvalue Competence

 Dimension Ratio M SD Range

 Social Work Students

 Importance * 5.02 .58 .20 .17-.87

 Internal / external * 2.89 .56 .22 -.05-.87

 Amenability to change * 4.54 .55 .24 .09-.91

 Mental health * 4.53 .51 .17 0-.85

 Anthropology Students

 Importance * .490 .53 .37 -1.0-1.0

 Internal / External 2.37 .43 .36 -.50-.83

 Amenability to change 2.45 .47 .28 0-1.0

 Mental health 1.75 .46 .20 -.15-.78

 Total Sample

 Importance * 4.95 .55 .26 -.42-.84

 Internal / External 2.53 .48 .29 -.44-.83

 Amenability to change 4.23 .51 .26 -.13-.91

 Mental health 2.70 .45 .19 -.88

 Note. Possible Competence Range = -1.0-1.0. Asterisk (*) indicates

 sufficiently high competence to conclude a shared model exists.

 TABLE 3. Content of Cultural Model: Most and Least Important

 Factors by Dimensions of Meaning (Merged Data)

 Most Most/ Most Amenable Mental Health

 Important Internal to Change Issue

 Abuse history Anger Marital Depression

 Having been Low self-esteem problems Anxiety

 abused Jealousy Unemployment Having been

 Having abused Anxiety Poor coping abused

 others Stress skills Unhappiness

 Power Depression Having

 Substance abuse Communication witnessed abuse

 problems

 Least Most/ Least Amenable No Mental

 Important External to Change Health Issue

 Anxiety Work stress Having been Unemployment

 Depression Financial abused Having Family problems

 Selfishness difficulties abused others Financial

 Unhappiness Unstable living Having difficulties

 Low education conditions witnessed abuse Power

 Unemployment Abuse history Selfishness

 The culture of The culture of

 violence violence

 TABLE 4. PROFIT Analysis: Understanding How Dimensions of Meaning

 Relate to Pile-Sort Data, by Student Type

 Measure of Social Work Anthropology All Students

 Significance Students (n=34) Students (n=17) (N=51)

 Importance

 Multiple R .79 ** .73 * .82 **

 [R.sup.2] .63 .53 .67

 Internal/External

 Multiple R .83 ** .43 .78 **

 [R.sup.2] .69 .18 .60

 Amenability to Change

 Multiple R .76 ** .72 ** .80 **

 [R.sup.2] .57 .52 .63

 Mental Health Issue

 Multiple R .30 .15 .35

 [R.sup.2] .09 .02 .20

 Note. * p <.01, ** p <.001.

 TABLE 5. F-Tests, Multivariate General Linear Model for

 Dimensions of Meaning

 Variable Importance Internal/ Amenability Mental

 (a) External to Change Health

 (b) (c) Issue (d)

 Student type .01 5.38 ** 1.05 3.03 *

 Gender 12.34 *** .01 2.57 .13

 Age 2.43 .02 2.28 1.04

 Graduate student .38 .10 .01 .19

 Full time student

 in a human

 service agency 1.73 1.04 4.58 *** 1.37

 Note. * p <.10, ** p <.05, *** p <.001.

 (a) [R.sup.2]=.31.

 (b) [R.sup.2]=.19.

 (c) [R.sup.2]=.16.

 (d) [R.sup.2]=.19.

Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com

Publication Information:

Article Title: Cultural Models of Domestic Violence: Perspectives of Social Work

and Anthropology Students. Contributors: Cyleste C. Collins - author, William W.

Dressier - author. Journal Title: Journal of Social Work Education. Volume: 44. Issue:

2. Publication Year: 2008. Page Number: 53+. COPYRIGHT 2008 Council On Social Work

Education; COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning

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