The purpose of this research is to understand the experiences of abused women who leave and return to their partners multiple times. Women who are in abusive relationships undergo a change process, which is a spectrum of emotional and behavioral responses that women experience in coping with abuse. Leaving and returning to the abusive relationship is a predominant theme in abused women's change process that has not been examined. An majority of research describing women’s responses to abuse has focused on how and why women leave their abusers. Thus, much is known relative to providing care for women who leave the relationship. Research has shown that women leave and return to their relationships an average of five to eight times prior to final termination. Exploring the leave/return phenomenon will inform treatment of abused women who choose to return to their abusers. Further, the leave/return phenomenon is significant because of the recent trend to individualize treatment based on abused women's stage of change. However, present change theory may be insufficient as a basis for intervention due to lack of consideration of the leave/return phenomenon. The specific aims of this study are to understand: (1) how abused women adjust to returning to the relationship after having left and (2) abused women’s perception of how leaving and returning may affect their perceptions and feelings about the abuser and the relationship. Participants will be 15 women, ages 18-59, who have previously experienced physical and/or sexual abuse in a relationship with a male partner and have had two or more experiences of physical separation and reconciliation. Data will be collected in an individual audio taped, unstructured interview. Data will be analyzed by the Strauss and Corbin (1998) method of developing grounded theory.
Session #1219 - Poster Session I
The 29th Annual MNRS Research Conference (April 1-4, 2005)