Session: The Protect-IPV Project: Promotive and Protective Factors for Reducing Intimate Partner Violence Risk — Science for Safe and Equitable Relationships (Society for Social Work and Research 31st Annual Conference)

The Promotive and Protective Factors for Reducing Intimate Partner Violence Risk Project or the PROTECT-IPV Project advances the science of IPV prevention by systematically identifying promotive, protective, and compensatory factors that reduce developmental risk across childhood and adolescence. This project is among the first to synthesize these factors across multiple developmental risk domains, offering a unified framework for upstream prevention. Through a series of coordinated systematic reviews, the project synthesizes evidence within and across key domains—child abuse and neglect, parent–child relationships, social and behavioral functioning, peer relationships, and adolescent dating violence—to understand how early strengths and supports disrupt trajectories toward future IPV perpetration and victimization.

Methods: Employing a multi-systematic review synthesis guided by Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) standards, the study team screened approximately 25,000 articles published between 2003-2025. Across reviews, we identified promotive, protective, and mitigating factors within each risk domain and examined how youth’s social identities (i.e., sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, and gender identities) shape pathways of positive development, with particular attention to minoritized identities. This study addresses the overarching question: What promotive, protective, and compensatory factors mitigate key developmental risk domains for IPV, and how are these processes shaped by youths’ social identities? The Mixed Methods Appraisal (MMAT) tool was used to assess the methodological quality of all studies in the final samples.

Results: Across domains, several consistent protective factors emerged, including stable and supportive caregiver relationships, social–emotional competencies, broader relational supports (e.g., peers and mentors), and school and community connectedness, alongside structural resources that promote family stability. At the same time, findings revealed limited and inconsistent attention to youths’ social identities across studies, highlighting a critical gap in understanding how protective processes operate for minoritized populations. Together, these results underscore the importance of multilevel, developmentally grounded interventions that extend beyond individual risk to include relational and structural supports.

Conclusions and Implications: This symposium presents key findings organized by developmental risk domain and introduces a unifying developmental IPV prevention framework. By consolidating this evidence base, the PROTECT-IPV Project provides an empirical foundation to advance translational science by identifying actionable leverage points for early intervention, informing cross-sector policy, and guiding the design of equitable prevention strategies that promote healthy relationships across the life course.