Empowerment of Women Environment Research (EMPOWER): Results of the E...

One aim of the practice-based research project coordinated by Ines Testoni from University of Padua was to find out if sociodrama is helpful in the field of domestic violence. With an EU Daphne grant against violence the project provided in the experimental group individual counseling with an integrated-ecological approach
and a sociodrama intervention group. The control group got individual counseling. More than 20 women in each country like Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Italy, Portugal, and Rumania received intervention. The presentation will cover quantitative research tools like Spontaneity Assessment Inventory (SAI-R), the Clinical Outcome Routine Evaluation Outcome Measure (CORE-OM), and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II).
We translated into appropriate languages and faced the challenge to validate it and to assess its applicability for women suffering from male violence. American psychodramatic language is not easy to transfer comprehensibly to a cultural diverse population and even more to women suffering from male violence. Hundreds of
students and trainees of different subjects as well as clients of our partner were tested in order to make qualitative as well as quantitative comparisons between survivors and the so-called normal population regarding the outcomes of the research tools. The findings show that psychodrama is an intervention that strengthens the
empowerment of women to say no to violence, to change the victim role and to avoid the violence transmission over generation.