Centrality measures to identify key stakeholders in Family Violence Councils

Abstract

The Family Violence Councils (FVC) are collaborative settings that bring together various organizations involved in the systems response to family violence. Social network analysis (SNA) is a technique that allows one to assess the connections between members (e.g., agencies) within a particular bounded network (Scott, 1991) and is well-suited to the study of councils. Centrality measures in SNA indicate which members in the network are central and prominent players in the setting, and therefore might be critical to engage in change efforts. The current study applied three centrality measures in five councils to identify consistent patterns regarding which organizations tend to be most central in the exchange of information among agencies responding to family violence. Further, the study examined whether and which type of centrality was related to the degree to which a given organization's policy and practices were influenced by council efforts. The study found domestic violence programs were significantly more likely to emerge as central in these settings. The study also found a relationship between an organization's centrality and perceived shifts in its policy and practices. However, only one type of centrality measure, namely closeness centrality, emerged as significantly predicting outcomes of interest when all three were examined simultaneously. The implications of these findings for research and practice will be discussed.