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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe Indiana University Maurer School of Law and IU’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences have been awarded a four-year, $763,686 grant from the National Institute of Justice to study safety concerns in family mediation.
The project will examine whether mediation is a safe alternative to court-based litigation in cases with a history of domestic violence. Experts are divided on whether family mediation is a useful alternative or whether the parties with a record of violence can be adequately protected from physical and emotional harm during mediation.
Amy Applegate, director of the Viola J. Taliaferro Family and Children Mediation Clinic, is a member of the research team.
“Despite the use of protective measures such as shuttle or videoconferencing mediation, the appropriateness of mediation has been a source of controversy in cases involving intimate-partner violence,” Applegate said. “The NIJ’s generous grant also makes it possible to measure the effectiveness of mediation in these cases.”
Amy Holtzworth-Munroe, professor at IU Bloomington’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, is the co-principal investigator for the study.
IU researchers will subcontract with co-principal investigator Connie J.A. Beck at the University of Arizona and with partners from the D.C. Superior Court’s Multi-Door Dispute Resolution Division.
The study, to take place at Multi-Door, will consist of a randomized control trial of family mediation with couples that have a history of violence which Multi-Door would generally consider inappropriate for alternative dispute resolution. The cases will be randomly assigned to one of three study conditions: traditional court-based litigation, shuttle mediation or videoconferencing mediation.
Immediate and one-year outcome measures have been established, and a one-year follow-up study will be conducted to evaluate continuing intimate-partner violence and fear-related issues.
Results of the study will be published in interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journals, reports and presentations to stakeholders with the goal of informing mediators, judges and courts.
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