Measuring the Impact of Victim Services: Developing the Victim Outcome and Satisfaction Survey Instrument and Platform, United States, 2022

In recent decades, the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) and the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) have spearheaded efforts to build, grow, and professionalize the victim services field. As a result, the United States service infrastructure for persons impacted by crime has advanced. Despite advancement, efforts to demonstrate the impact and effectiveness of victim services have lagged. Grantee and subgrantee data collected by OVC and OVW demonstrated how hard programs are working, both in terms of the number of victims being served and the range of services offered, but to continue to advance the field, a new platform and survey instrument was developed for victim service providers (VSPs) to move from measuring outputs to outcomes and from anecdote to evidence in demonstrating the effects of these programs on victims' lives. The Measures for Providers Responding to Victimization Experiences (iMPRoVE) platform and survey instrument was the result.
The iMPRoVE platform and survey instrument built on the existing efforts of VSPs to develop a validated, trauma-informed, low-burden outcome measurement instrument that can be completed by victims and survivors. It was designed to provide a victim outcome and service quality survey intended for assessing the effectiveness and quality of services, for supporting the use of best practices, for justifying funding allocations and demonstrating responsible stewardship of funds, and for advocating for additional resources as necessary. Many VSPs previously administered outcome and/or satisfaction surveys to clients with considerable variability in the type, quality, and timing of questions asked and the methodology used to ask them. The iMPRoVE survey instrument was designed to address this issue by providing a standardized client survey instrument and methodology, allowing VSPs to benchmark their findings against other similar programs.