Numerous interventions have been developed to offer a range of health-related services to women who have experienced sexual violence, both immediately following the assault as well as longer term.  Many of these services are based in healthcare settings, such as hospital emergency departments, women’s clinics, and physicians’ offices.  Although there are increasing calls for the evaluation of all healthcare interventions, including interventions for victims/survivors¹ of sexual violence, relatively little research has focused on healthcare-based responses to sexual assault.  One reason for the relative paucity of evaluation research in this area may be the challenges of identifying appropriate instruments that could be adapted and used to undertake such work.

Therefore, the goal of this project was to conduct a review of evaluation instruments² that have been used in empirical investigations of healthcare-based interventions for women who have experienced sexual violence.

Twenty-nine assessment instruments used in research on healthcare-based interventions for women who experienced sexual violence were reviewed.  Approximately half (n=15) of the instruments focused on health, 8 (28%) focused on service delivery, 1 (3%) focused on attitudes, 1 (3%) focused on behavior, and 4 (13%) focused on multiple topics.  All but one of the health focused instruments examined some aspect of mental health.  Most of the instruments examining healthcare services for sexual violence victims/survivors collected a variety of information concerning the characteristics of the clinics, patients, and clinicians, and were often designed to be completed by clinicians.  Only one of these healthcare services instruments examined women’s perspectives in terms of how they felt about the care that they received.  Although the mental health assessment instruments had well documented psychometric properties, there was little documentation of the psychometric properties of most of the other instruments.  Researchers and practitioners are encouraged to continue this important work by collaborating to develop and refine a variety of assessment tools with sound psychometric properties that may be helpful in the description and evaluation of healthcare-based interventions for women who have experienced sexual violence.