NCJ Number
219621
Journal
Journal of Family Violence Volume: 22 Issue: 5 Dated: July 2007 Pages: 259-265
Date Published
July 2007
Length
7 pages
Annotation
This article explored racial differences in battered women’s experiences and preferences for treatment from physicians for abuse-related issues.
Abstract
Results indicated that, overall, African-American women were more likely than White women to seek abuse-related health care at emergency or urgent care settings and to have fewer preferences for the race of their physician. However, both White and African-American women expressed a preference for a female physician. Other findings revealed that while previous research has suggested that African-American women rate certain physician behaviors less negatively than White women, the current analysis indicated that if certain confounding factors are held constant, such as source of care, educational level, and income, racial differences in physical approval ratings almost disappeared. Only one physician behavior--blaming the patient for the abuse--differentiated the groups, with African-American women less likely to view this type of behavior as negatively as White women. The findings suggest that since different types of women seek abuse-related health care in different types of medical settings, health systems should implement screening and intervention programs at multiple points of health care entry and should cater educational outreach to the unique culture of individual points of medical care access. Participants were 132 women recruited from 5 battered women’s programs in southeastern Wisconsin. Participants completed a series of three questionnaires: a demographic characteristic and background questionnaire, the Conflict Tactics Scale, and the Physician Assessment and Treatment of Abuse Inventory. Data were analyzed using the Fisher’s exact test and multivariate regression models. Tables, references