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Copyright © 2004 Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse
This document highlights the activities and achievements of the Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse (MINCAVA) Electronic Clearinghouse during 2003. This report provides information about program funding, organizational structure, site usage, and changes made to the website in the past year.
The MINCAVA Electronic Clearinghouse has received grant support from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation as part of the National Network for Applied Research on Violence Prevention (the Network). The Network is an integral part of the Foundation's Next Generations initiative that seeks to prevent child abuse, youth violence, and adult domestic violence in demonstration communities and across the country. As the funding is nearing its end, we are currently seeking continued support.
With future funding, MINCAVA staff could expand the site to:
Convert the entire site contents to XML
Develop specific content areas such as child witness to domestic violence, global gender violence, trafficking, etc.
Continue to expand internationally through conferences and teleconferences
Co-sponsor events that address violence prevention and intervention strategies that could be followed up online
The MINCAVA Electronic Clearinghouse is maintained by approximately 1.5 FTE staff, which includes:
Jenn Root, 50% time Web Information Coordinator, manages the daily operations of the site including weblink, event, job, and guest book submission authorization, answering technical information requests, finding and correcting dead links, coding new documents, and adding new pages and information.
Russ Burdick, 25% time Internet Systems Designer and Administrator, maintains MINCAVA's mail, web, and database servers. He also performs security audits and updates, web programming and administration.
Yukiko Nakajima, 25% time Coding Specialist and developer of new site content
Stephanie Kolari, 25% time Outreach Coordinator and Technical Support
Jeanna Christenson, 15% time Administrative Assistant, is responsible for mailing correspondence and assisting with MINCAVA sponsored projects.
Jeffrey Edelson, 10% time Executive Director
MINCAVA Electronic Clearinghouse seeks to:
Help service providers who encounter people affected by violence in their work by providing resources that help them better recognize and address violence and abuse through training manuals and materials.
Help faculties of higher education institutions better prepare the upcoming workforce to address and prevent violence and abuse in their fields by providing educational resources such as syllabi, curricula, and a variety of classroom resource referrals.
Help students find information about violence and abuse so they can learn, address, and prevent violence and abuse in their lives as well as in the lives of those they encounter in their careers.
Help create policy and social change by providing a forum for concerned people to learn and share information about the devastating effects of violence in their homes, schools, businesses, and communities.
Help people directly affected by violence and abuse cope with its effects and/or escape the abuse by providing information for assessment, referrals to service providers (internationally), guides for friends, families and employers, and intervention and treatment research findings.
MINCAVA seeks to meet these goals by providing an accessible, user-friendly website that charges no fee for usage
MINCAVA staff members produce and solicit content for the site. The site is filled with papers, reports, research findings, syllabi, curricula, presentations, training manuals, referral sources to service providers, links to other sites, and searchable databases of journals, videos, books, and other reference material.
In 2003, the MINCAVA Electronic Clearinghouse featured a site redesign in which warning buttons were introduced on the home page. We also expanded to pull together web-based utilities that include the Calendar of Events, Guestbook, Job Opportunities, and Funding Opportunities. In fact, we hope to further spotlight our Funding "jar" with the new site redesign.
The Rural Project existed as a public part of the MINCAVA Electronic Clearinghouse site redesign. This project featured specialized content area and added new relevant information throughout 2003.
During 2003, approximately 360 new links to articles and WebPages were added to the content database, bringing our resource links to 3,410. We expanded to include information on sexual assault coalitions, global perspectives on gender violence, and health care and gender violence.
Examples of new content added to the MINCAVA Electronic Clearinghouse include:
Table 1. New Site Content, 2003
| Name of Document | Location of Document on the MINCAVA Website |
|---|---|
| Making Women's Shelters Accessible to Transgendered Women | http://www.queensu.ca/humanrights/tap/index.html |
| The Role of Restorative Justice in the Battered Women's Movement | http://www.bwjp.org/documents/finalrj.pdf |
| Family Violence: Handbook for the Dental Community | http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hppb/familyviolence/html/fvdent_e.html |
| Parenting in the Context of Domestic Violence | http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/programs/cfcc/pdffiles/fullReport.pdf. |
| HIV Positive Women Report More Partner Violence | http://www.popcouncil.org/pdfs/horizons/VCTarticle.pdf |
In June, 2003, The MINCAVA Electronic Clearinghouse converted the majority of the site to xml. The goals were to increase navigational features and to organize the website in an effort to accommodate a constantly growing library of documents, organizations and service providers related to research and education about violence prevention. The success of the conversion can be seen in the site's usage, development, and technical assistance requests.
Google, the world's largest search engine, offers the fastest, easiest way to find information on the web and responds to more than 200 million search queries per day. Google is one of the 10 most popular sites on the Internet, and is used around the world by millions of people. Google recently launched Google Grants, a program that provides free Google AdWords advertising to selected non-profits that apply to the program. The Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse (MINCAVA) was selected to participate in the program, and for a time, our text-based ads appeared alongside or above Google search results whenever someone entered a search into Google that matched the keywords selected for our campaign. Clicking on the ad took searchers to our website where they could find additional information. This campaign proved to be successful for MINCAVA in terms of increasing exposure to our extensive resource base.
Jenn Root, Web Information Coordinator, worked with a small collective of professionals from the Injury and Prevention Unit at the Minnesota Department of Health to collect and post online resources that increase the healthcare community's capacity to address issues of domestic violence and sexual assault. A group of physicians, midwives, advocates and public health nurses pulled together regional and organizational materials and provided them to MINCAVA to enrich the healthcare and domestic violence section of the MINCAVA Electronic Clearinghouse. MINCAVA was able to provide technical assistance and demonstrate the various features of the electronic clearinghouse.
MINCAVA Electronic Clearinghouse provides information to a broad user pool, which includes but is not limited to: victims/survivors, secondary victims, perpetrators, advocates, teachers/professors, students, attorneys, law enforcement officers, faith leaders, social service providers, activists, doctors, human resource personnel and more.
MINCAVA Electronic Clearinghouse serves a growing national and international audience. We served, on average, over 900 unique users each day in 2003, for a total of approximately 330,195 visitors. Users come from countries across the globe. The top 10 hits per country included: the United States (464,439), Canada (79,460), Australia (51,325), United Kingdom (39,927), Japan (18,981), Italy (15,917), Netherlands (10,851), France (10,551), New Zealand (10,422), and Germany (10,312). This information is based on where the domain name of the visitor is registered, and may not always be an accurate identifier of the actual geographic location of this visitor. As seen in the chart below, the majority users hits (3,528,487), were considered unresolved or unknown because they accessed the site through a .com, .net, or .org address (for example, while a vast majority of .com domain names are from the United States, there is a small minority of domain names that exist outside of the United States).
The following general statistic tables indicate the total monthly and yearly activity for the MINCAVA Electronic Clearinghouse in 2003.
Table 2. Site Usage
| -- | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | June | July | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Av # of user sessions per day | 645 | 754 | 795 | 858 | 628 | 971 | 971 | 791 | 1,151 | 1,290 | 1,291 | 954 | 905 |
| % User sessions from US | 10.90% | 11.78% | 11.77% | 13.49% | 11.54% | 10.07% | 8.08% | 9.68% | 11.37% | 11.68% | 10.62% | 8.47% | 10.79% |
| % Internat'l user sessions | 10.58% | 10.22% | 9.41% | 8.17% | 10.95% | 10.56% | 7.32% | 7.98% | 8.42% | 9.29% | 10.31% | 3.84% | 8.92% |
| % User sessions of unknown origin | 78.50% | 78.00% | 78.82% | 78.33% | 77.51% | 79.37% | 84.60% | 82.35% | 80.20% | 79.02% | 79.07% | 87.69% | 80.29% |
| Av # of page views per day | 1,395 | 1,593 | 1,731 | 1,839 | 1,422 | 7,430 | 6,668 | 6,130 | 6,793 | 8,452 | 7,693 | 6,655 | 4,817 |
| Av # of hits per day | 6,366 | 7,510 | 8,295 | 8,665 | 6,771 | 15,310 | 12,781 | 12,232 | 15,369 | 18,946 | 17,715 | 13,794 | 11,977 |
| # of successful hits for entire site | 196,435 | 210,290 | 257,160 | 259,978 | 209,906 | 458,316 | 396,226 | 379,204 | 461,070 | 587,326 | 531,460 | 427,626 | 364,583 |
The average number of users for the year 2003 was 905. The table above illustrates the number of user sessions per day for each month in 2003. This data does not inform us about the number of unique people accessing the site per day, but does provide insight about how many times per day users conduct a session on the site. A `user' is considered a unique person accessing the site. A user commits `hits' on the site when he/she visits various pages on the website. Therefore, one user may commit several hits during his/her user session.
Table 3. Top 10 downloaded PDF documents: January 1, 2003 - December 31, 2003
Table 4. Top 10 most requested html documents: January 1, 2003 - December 31, 2003
| Page | Number of Times Viewed |
|---|---|
| Workplace Violence: A Selected Bibliography http://www.mincava.umn.edu/documents/bibs/bibworkv.shtml | 68,837 |
| Children of Domestic Violence: Risks and Remedies http://www.mincava.umn.edu/documents/hart/risks.shtml | 39,894 |
| Domestic Violence Factoids http://www.mincava.umn.edu/documents/factoid/factoid.shtml | 38,056 |
| Same-Sex Domestic Violence References http://www.mincava.umn.edu/documents/bibs/samesex.shtml | 31,390 |
| Bibliography of Sources on Sexual and Domestic Violence in the Jewish Community http://www.mincava.umn.edu/documents/bibs/jewish.shtml | 27,055 |
| Limits and Risks of Programs for Wife Batterers http://www.mincava.umn.edu/documents/limits/limits.shtml | 23,370 |
| Domestic Violence, Child Abuse, and Youth Violence: Strategies http://www.mincava.umn.edu/link/documents/fvpf2/fvpf2.shtml | 20,727 |
| Mothers and Children: Understanding the Links http://www.mincava.umn.edu/documents/nij/nij.shtml | 19,324 |
| Children Who Witness Domestic Violence: Selected Bibliography http://www.mincava.umn.edu/documents/bibs/bibkids.shtml | 19,284 |
| About the Link Research Project http://www.mincava.umn.edu/link/about.asp | 16,434 |
During 2003, the MINCAVA Electronic Clearinghouse received approximately 268 information requests through the website's email account. The tables below show the number of information requests received per month.
The MINCAVA Electronic Clearinghouse receives feedback from site users in a variety of ways.
Email/Web submission form. Users can email site staff to share feedback, ask questions about the site, or seek referrals.
User survey. The user survey provides staff with helpful information such as how the user found the site, user likes and dislikes, frequency of use, and more. (See Appendix A for survey.)
Guest book. Users can express reactions, share experiences, or just sign their name to the guest book.
The following is a sampling of comments users have written in the guest book during 2003:
"Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! You have provided a comprehensive and most impressive resource. I am a school-based advocate who works for a domestic violence agency in Midcoast Maine. I have found countless resources on your site to share with the students I work with."
"I have just started working at our local shelter as volunteer coordinator and I am pleased to find such a comprehensive source for materials. Thank you!"
"The reason that I'm visiting this website is because I'm near graduation at WSU. I'm starting a very interesting class on Domestic violence and a rule 25 CD class. I'm just looking for some interesting paper topics. I think that this will be a very helpful web site. Thank you"
"Thank you. Keep inspiring!"
"I gained a lot of insight from reading the research into batterers. I am an Indigenous community psychologist in Australia who is currently working in the Indigenous family violence field."
"This site is very helpful. I am writing a college paper on domestic violence and I am finding the information very helpful."
"I really enjoyed the site. I found it listed on Google. Enjoy the New Year."
"Your site is very good. Thank you for the opportunity to sign your guest book. I will recommend and come back. I found it very interesting to read other peoples comments about your site."
The MINCAVA Electronic Clearinghouse has experienced change, received accolades, and obtained opportunities to participate and collaborate. The site growth can be seen in the site's usage, development, and technical assistance requests.
The Electronic Clearinghouse averaged 900 users per day. During 2003, approximately 360 new links to articles and WebPages were added to the content database, bringing our resource links to 3,410.
The Electronic Clearinghouse has continued to receive a steady number of emails and submissions to our new Events page, Guestbook page, Job Opportunities page, and Funding Opportunities page. The Electronic Clearinghouse has received positive feedback about our resources from others in the field and was said to be a valuable resource in others' violence prevention efforts.
Web usage statistics were calculated using the software program Webalizer Version 2.01 http://www.mrunix.net/webalizer/
Average user length session statistics were calculated using the software program Web Trends http://www.webtrends.com/default.htm
MINCAVA Electronic Clearinghouse: a portfolio of information about one of the most widely used websites for violence-related resources on the Internet today http://www.mincava.umn.edu/center/portfoli.asp
Survey for user feedback can be found at http://www.mincava.umn.edu/Surveys/survey.asp
The following projects are a part of the Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse (MINCAVA):
MINCAVA Electronic Clearinghouse |
The Link Research Project |
Violence Against Women Online Resources
VAWnet (Applied Research Forum) |
Minnesota Rural Project for Women and Child Safety
MINCAVA is directed by Jeffrey L. Edleson,
PhD.
File Last Modified: 52. Copyright © 1995–2005 Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse
