Challenges/Alternative Approaches. We initially intended to examine physical IPV as a primary outcome for this study, but were unable to do so because of the low prevalence of physical IPV in the study. The low prevalence of physical IPV in the study was likely due to the phrasing of questions around violence suggesting current experience. We examined multiple different ways to incorporate physical violence as outcomes in the analyses, but ultimately, too few women reported this form of violence to examine physical violence as a separate outcome. While we planned to include state fixed effects to account for any time invariant differences between states, our decision to include women who moved outside FFCW states precluded our ability to incorporate state fixed effects. We included women who moved outside FFCW states to avoid selection bias given the correlation between movement out of FFCW states and IPV experience in this sample. Since we were unable to account for state-level fixed effects, we added measured covariates to account for potential confounding across groups.
Challenges/Alternative Approaches. The COVID-19 pandemic presented multiple challenges to engaging CBOs and participants and, for these reasons, the study team shifted the study questions and study sites to accommodate. Initially, the study team sought to make comparisons in experiences across White and African American TANF participants to explain the findings in Chapters 2 and 3; however, participants often did not have the time or safe space to participate in interviews because of increased child care obligations and center closings due to the pandemic. For these reasons, we updated our research question and sought to understand structural discrimination more generally, which could encompass aspects of race and ethnicity if those topics arose during interviews. Second, while study staff obtained initial participation and protocol review from a CBO that provides support to IPV in an urban center in Georgia, the pandemic caused the organization to lose staff and capacity to participate in referrals to the study. Subsequently, the PI established another relationship with a center that services IPV survivors and survivors of gender-based violence in New York, a state with a particularly high TANF-to-Poverty Ratios and where the researcher has existing relationships. Given New York’s relatively generous time limits and sanctioning policies, a second site located in Missouri was added to increase referrals to the study among those who had experiences with time limits and more stringent sanctions.
