Building evidence and data

Research, monitoring and evaluation are essential to understanding the prevalence, trends, drivers and reinforcing factors of different forms of violence. Such evidence shows the magnitude of problems related to family violence, gendered violence and all forms of violence against women, the opportunities for intervention and how best to measure the effectiveness and impact of such interventions.  

Important progress has been made over the reporting period, and there are opportunities to continue to build evidence on what works in violence prevention and to better evaluate Victoria’s progress.  

Where progress has been made

Monitoring and evaluation work by Respect Victoria

Respect Victoria’s Statewide Theory of Change builds on the work of Free from Violence by mapping a series of short-, medium- and long-term outcomes required to enable enduring change across Victoria. The theory underpins a monitoring framework of indicators and measures that track progress in prevention. Establishing consistent, reliable and valid measurement tools for these indicators – and building the data collection and reporting infrastructure – is a long-term project that Respect Victoria continues to progress.  

Respect Victoria is also working with the Ballarat community to build a theory of change and an indicators and outcomes framework to measure progress and impact for the place-based Respect Ballarat project.  

A core function of Respect Victoria is to support Victoria’s prevention practice by building sector literacy, capability and alignment in monitoring, evaluation and learning. Over the reporting period, Respect Victoria launched and revised the monitoring, evaluation and learning toolkit to support practitioners, project managers and organisations (159).

I would like to do a little pat on the back to Respect Victoria for the really hard work that you’ve done on trying to cement monitoring and evaluation as business as usual, because the family violence space in general struggles with that from the National Plan down, that difficult work of measurement ... And I know this stuff is really hard ... but yeah, you’ve just done an amazing job of just getting out there and putting it on the table. – Phillip Ripper, No to Violence

Funded program evaluations

A number of government-funded programs have also been independently evaluated throughout the reporting period or currently have independent evaluations underway. These include:  

• Supporting Young People to Understand Affirmative Consent
• Supporting Multicultural and Faith Communities to Prevent Family Violence
• Free From Violence Local Government Program  
• Targeted early intervention with boys and young men to address violence against women and build workforce capacity program
• Preventing Violence Through Sport Grants Program
• Starts With Us, Women’s Legal Service Victoria
• Women’s Health Services Capacity Building Project  
• Statewide Prevention Workforce Development Program
• All Come Out to Play!

When made publicly available, these sorts of program evaluations can make a valuable contribution to the evidence base and support continuous improvement across the sector.

Establishment of the Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women  

In 2022, the Australian Research Council announced a $34.9 million grant over seven years to establish a world-first Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (CEVAW), to examine the structural drivers that cause and compound violence against women and pioneer new, evidence-based approaches to improve policy and practice across Australia and the Indo-Pacific. Launched in 2024 and headed by Monash University, CEVAW comprises 13 chief investigators from six Australian universities, and 45 Australian and international partner organisations including Respect Victoria.

Specifically, CEVAW states it is adopting an Indigenous-centred approach to evidence building, in order to ‘build an interdisciplinary and data-driven research evidence base, co-designed with partners, on what works to reduce VAW [violence against women] … and mobilise partnerships to deliver scalable approaches to eliminate VAW across communities’ (160).

Research and evidence released in the reporting period  

Research into family violence, violence against women and gendered violence from universities, independent research groups, government agencies, and prevention organisations has grown in volume and sophistication over the reporting period (161). The 2021 National Community Attitudes towards Violence against Women Survey (NCAS) was also released in this reporting period. 

Understanding the dynamics and drivers of gendered violence  

Respect Victoria released Summarising the Evidence, a commissioned set of evidence reviews to better understand the prevalence, nature, drivers and risk factors of different forms of violence against women, family violence and gendered violence (23, 162). The project sought to explore the extent to which addressing the gendered drivers of men’s violence against women helps to prevent other forms of family and gendered violence, including adolescent violence in the home, child maltreatment and elder abuse.  

These evidence reviews indicated that continued efforts to address the gendered drivers of men’s violence against women are very likely to have positive outcomes for preventing other forms of violence. The project also highlighted where more evidence is needed to better understand how to effectively prevent different forms of gendered and family violence across communities. Importantly, the project provided a foundation for building practice knowledge about how intersecting forms of structural oppression overlap with the gendered drivers of men’s violence against women to shape how and why violence occurs.  

Aboriginal-led family violence prevention  

In support of the Dhelk Dja Partnership Forum, Respect Victoria partnered with Family Safety Victoria to publish two research reports on Aboriginal prevention in Victoria: the Aboriginal Family Violence Prevention Evidence Review and the Aboriginal Family Violence Prevention Mapping Project (19, 93). They are important contributions to the evidence on, and practice of, Aboriginal-led prevention. They highlight key challenges, gaps and opportunities to strengthen prevention work and better support ACCOs. These approaches are further explored in Recognising and enabling community-led and specialist prevention work.

Placed-based prevention approaches  

In the reporting period, Respect Victoria commissioned an evidence review that synthesised global and Australian evidence on the effectiveness of place-based approaches to violence prevention (96). This included a focus on combining interventions at individual, family, organisational, community and society levels to mutually reinforce each other for greater impact. The review was instrumental in building a business case for the development of a saturation model, which resulted in the Victorian Government funding the Respect Ballarat initiative.  

Community organisations have also conducted work on place-based partnerships led by women’s health services including the Community Champions for Primary Prevention Action in the West project and Taking ACtion: Affirmative Consent in the North project (163, 164).  

Understanding men and masculinities  

Our Watch released the Men in focus practice guide in 2022, an important research translation piece that built on the 2019 Men in focus: Unpacking masculinities and engaging men in the prevention of violence against women evidence review. This guide outlines five key evidence-informed principles for engaging men and boys in primary prevention activities, specifically that work needs to be intersectional, gender transformative, strengths-based, and accountable to women, and to have solutions across all levels of society.

It outlines the long-term, collective and intersectional approach needed to dismantle and transform the norms, structures and practices that reinforce gender inequality and lead to men’s violence against women (165). Additional Men in focus practitioner resources including videos, tips, reflective questions, support guides and infographics were also released in 2024 (166).  

In 2022, Respect Victoria partnered with The Men’s Project, an initiative of Jesuit Social Services, to undertake the 2024 Man Box study, the second national study exploring the association between attitudes to masculine stereotypes and the behaviours of men aged 18–45 years. The study found that the more men agreed with harmful masculine norms, the more likely they were to hold violence-supportive attitudes and to self-report several other harmful attitudes and behaviours including perpetrating intimate partner violence, engaging in risk-taking behaviours and frequently accessing violent pornography. Notably, most participants had mixed relationships with these masculine norms, and even those who were less aligned with them still held harmful attitudes.

Respect Victoria expanded on the findings of the 2024 Man Box study to develop a companion report, Willing, capable and confident: Men, masculinities and the prevention of violence against women (95).  

Young men online

Over the reporting period, the eSafety Commissioner (eSafety) continued to contribute important evidence on masculinities and the experiences of young men online through its two-part research series, conducted in partnership with Deakin University and Queensland University of Technology. Part 1: Being a young man online explores what influences, motivates, shapes and informs their online experiences. Part 2: Supporting young men online maps opportunities to support young men to have safe and positive online experiences, and eSafety’s role in supporting men online and shaping healthy masculinities (167, 168).  

The impetus for doing that research came out of our team, because we wanted to identify intervention points for young men and boys, and help them to not go down that patriarchal masculinity direction [that drives gendered violence and harm] – Carolyn Wilkes, eSafety  

Technology-facilitated gendered violence  

eSafety conducted a literature review that detailed the prevalence and nature of technology-facilitated abuse in the context of family, domestic and sexual violence; the groups most impacted; and the most effective responses for addressing it (169).  

ANROWS conducted a study on workplace technology-facilitated sexual harassment, including behaviours, characteristics and trends, the specific drivers of this type of violence, and ways that employers and regulators can better prevent, detect and respond to it (170).  

Respect Victoria partnered with Body Safety Australia in late 2024 to undertake research into social media algorithms and AI-generated image-based abuse, and implications for the prevention of gendered violence among children and young people. The findings will be released in late 2025.

Attitudes towards and impact of online pornography

eSafety published a research series on young people’s experiences with and attitudes towards online pornography. In addition, Our Watch examined the impact of pornography on young people, including attitudes towards gender identities, roles and stereotypes, and ideas about healthy relationships (171, 172). These studies provide important considerations for incorporating strategies to address the impact of online pornography into prevention policy and practice.  

Family violence and child maltreatment

The Australian Child Maltreatment Study (2023) released results from a survey of Australians over 16 years of age, creating the first nationally representative estimates of child maltreatment including physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, neglect and family violence. The study estimates that 62% of Australians experienced at least one type of child maltreatment indicating widespread and long-running impacts of trauma for people, families and communities (29). The study also illustrated the gendered nature of this violence, finding that girls experience higher rates of sexual abuse than boys (37% versus 19%) and emotional abuse (36% versus 25%) – with these forms of violence, together with multi-type child maltreatment, being most strongly associated with adverse outcomes (29). These findings highlight why preventing abuse and neglect towards children and creating recovery and healing pathways for them within domestic, family and sexual violence systems are key to preventing future pathways into perpetration and victimisation.  

Exposure to childhood violence and future offending

Research to better identify and understand sexual offending was released during the reporting period. An ANROWS study examined the relationship between young men’s perpetration of sexual harm and violence and their experience of domestic and family violence as children (173). Jesuit Social Services, in partnership with the University of New South Wales, conducted a study on sexual offending against children among Australian men, which reported on the prevalence of sexual offending, risk behaviours and attitudes, and correlations between offending behaviours and perpetrator characteristics and experiences (174).  

Where there are challenges

While important progress has been made, report participants highlighted the need to further strengthen evaluation, to better measure impact and outcomes, address data gaps, strengthen data collection systems and capacity, and build monitoring and evaluation capability.  

We’re not investing properly in the monitoring and evaluation to be able to tell a story of impact. That would be my key message – data costs money, and we need to invest in the data to build the evidence to help us figure out what does and doesn’t work – Anonymous report participant  

Evaluation focuses on activities rather than outcomes

Robust evaluative evidence is essential for the Victorian Government and prevention system to show collective impact over time and safeguard the investment, political leadership and community support required to maintain progress. However, evaluations of prevention initiatives often focus on the activities delivered and the outputs of these activities, such as the number of participants, rather than whether the project achieved the outcomes it was designed to deliver.  

This can be due to reporting requirements, resourcing and capability constraints, a lack of time in project timeframes, lack of available population-level outcome measures and service usage data, and the inherent complexity of measuring outcomes in prevention, which is, by its nature, long-term generational work. More outcome evaluations are needed to provide evidence for changes in knowledge, attitudes, efficacies and behaviours. Evaluations should also consider short-, medium- and long-term outcomes, and take a cumulative approach when assessing. More flexible and appropriate approaches to reporting will also lead to better data and evidence of outcomes.  

Report participants also highlighted a paucity of evaluative evidence illustrating long-term impact.  

We need to increasingly look at how we measure the longitudinal outcomes of our prevention work, so we can better understand its lasting impact – particularly for young people. For example, understanding the impact five years after they have participated in a prevention program. – Jo Pride, Family Safety Victoria (footnote one)

Lack of transparency in data sharing  

Report participants also raised the importance of publishing or sharing major evaluation reports, for example, those pertaining to government-funded prevention programs, to support collective understanding of what is working and how prevention programs and practices could be improved. While they acknowledged the potential sensitivities of sharing evaluation reports, they emphasised the need to implement ways of sharing evaluation findings to support continuous learning and improvement of prevention practices and approaches.  

Opportunities for action

Measuring impact and outcomes through continuing to build a statewide MEL system

Despite Strong Foundations specifying impact measurement as a priority for the next stage of reforms, it was viewed by report participants as a gap. Report participants acknowledged the work Family Safety Victoria had done to progress the prevention domain of the Family Violence Outcomes Framework and highlighted where more work is needed to connect it to prevention work on the ground, and to strengthen consensus and buy-in from prevention-focused organisations and sectors on appropriate indicators and measures to support its implementation. Some participants also emphasised the importance of ensuring the framework is directly linked to prevention efforts, to ensure accountability for investment in programs and initiatives.  

We need better outcomes measurement that’s directly linked to the primary prevention effort … It’s like, well, this takes generations, but that’s not always the case … I think it’s more about increasing the levels of accountability with clear links to reducing men’s violence including through a better outcomes framework. – Matt Tyler, Jesuit Social Services  

To complement the prevention domain of the Family Violence Outcomes Framework and provide greater visibility of prevention progress, Respect Victoria has been building a statewide monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) system designed to encompass government funded and non-funded activity across Victoria. Together with the Statewide Theory of Change and the Monitoring and Evaluation Advisory Group, Respect Victoria has developed an impact framework to enable effective measurement of short-, medium- and long-term indicators of collective, statewide progress. However, Respect Victoria requires sustained funding to implement it across the state, including to set up the required infrastructure to support data collection and reporting against that framework, and to generate valuable prevention evidence. Players in the prevention system will also require resources and support to align with and report against this framework.

Strengthen data collection systems and capacity  

Report participants highlighted a lack of systems and processes to support effective data collection, storage and analysis, an issue that can limit effective monitoring, evaluation and reporting efforts. In some cases, organisations are collecting good data but have limited time and capacity to analyse and use it to inform their work. This is also an issue across government departments where data is being routinely collected but is not always applied to inform decision-making.  

To improve monitoring and evaluation of prevention programs and activities and demonstrate the impact of prevention work, organisations need to be funded and supported to develop their data collection systems as part of a broader strategy to build a statewide MEL system.

Report participants reflected that the more government grant programs are linked to a whole-of-program theory of change and/or logic model, the better the opportunity for them to link to shared outcomes and impact. This provides government and service providers with a clear picture of the link between activities, outcomes and where gaps lie. Currently, there is a deficit in data linking specific initiatives to changes in behaviours, which has made it difficult to demonstrate the impact of primary prevention on longer-term outcomes, including incidences of violence and harm.  

Build monitoring and evaluation capability  

In parallel to continuing to develop a comprehensive MEL system, there is a need to further build the capability of prevention practitioners to monitor and evaluate their work. This would ensure more consistent evaluation approaches are used across programs and organisations to continue to build a more cohesive picture of prevention impact.  

This work would include sharing evaluation and practice evidence across programs and organisations to support continuous learning and improvement, including sharing what has not worked. This capability building could be a stronger focus in statewide workforce development activities as well as communities of practice for specific initiatives.  

Addressing research gaps and data on what works

There has been growing recognition of the need to improve data collection and dissemination on the use of violence, with many report participants highlighting the need for data on areas such as pathways into and out of perpetration, perpetration dynamics, drivers and risk factors.  

The Victorian Parliament held an inquiry in 2024 into capturing data on people who use family violence in Victoria (175). The Parliamentary Committee’s final report provides an extensive account of the current gaps in data on people who use violence, and it outlines opportunities to improve data collection systems and processes (176). In particular, it recommended national and statewide surveys, as called for by Respect Victoria, Our Watch, No to Violence and survivor advocates and researchers, including Lula Dembele and Michael Flood (176-178). Such surveys would provide deeper insights into the full scope of perpetration, including trends, risk factors, effectiveness of interventions, and opportunities for targeted prevention.  

Report participants highlighted the need for better data and research on the experiences and needs of specific communities and population groups, particularly children and young people, LGBTIQA+ communities (particularly trans and gender diverse people), older people, and women from migrant and refugee backgrounds. For instance, national reporting (such as the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Personal Safety Survey) has historically not captured information on sexual orientation, gender identity or intersex status, leading to under-reporting and invisibility of violence against LGBTIQA+ communities (179, 180). There is a need for more inclusive data collection processes and data that is disaggregated by demographics when evaluating prevention projects, to ensure the experiences of diverse and marginalised communities are captured and can inform tailored prevention practices and approaches.

It’s so hard to do this work within a data deficit for LGBTIQA+ communities. It’s really a big challenge when you have services who haven’t been collecting the data and still aren’t collecting the data. – Joe Ball, the Victorian Commissioner for LGBTIQA+ Communities  

Report participants also noted the need to expand research into online misogyny and other forms of discrimination, and to address forms of violence perpetrated using rapidly evolving technologies. This should be done in collaboration with organisations and sectors already undertaking this work to meet the shared goals of gendered violence prevention and national security.

Embed Indigenous Data Sovereignty and build the evidence-base for Aboriginal-led prevention

Despite anecdotal evidence of promising practice, research highlights there is little evaluative data demonstrating the impact and efficacy of Aboriginal-led prevention in Victoria. Concerted efforts are needed to build the evidence base for Aboriginal-led prevention, and this must be supported by funded and Aboriginal-led evaluations, accessible data management systems, Aboriginal research positions and capacity and capability building in data analysis. Embedding Indigenous Data Sovereignty is also critical to addressing the evidence gap, by ensuring Aboriginal communities and ACCOs have access, ownership and control over data collected by and about them, and they can use it to validate, guide and strengthen Aboriginal-led prevention efforts. Embedding Indigenous Data Sovereignty is also a key priority in ensuring Victoria is Treaty ready.

Footnotes