Danger Assessment Calendar

The Danger Assessment (DA) was originally developed by Co-Investigator Campbell (1986) with consultation and content validity support from battered women, shelter workers, law enforcement officials, and other clinical experts on battering. The first portion of the measure assesses severity and frequency of battering by presenting the woman with a calendar of the past year. The woman is asked to mark the approximate days when physically abusive incidents occurred, and to rank the severity of the incident on a 1 to 5 (1=slap, pushing, no injuries and/or lasting pain through 5=use of weapon, wounds from weapon) scale. The calendar portion was conceptualized as a way to raise the consciousness of the woman and reduce the denial and minimization of the abuse, especially since using a calendar increases accurate recall in other situations (Campbell, 1995; Ferraro et al., 1983). In the original scale development, 38% of women who initially reported no increase in severity and frequency, changed their response to “yes” after filling out the calendar (Campbell, 1986; Campbell, 1995).
The training module, offered at www.dangerassessment.org, provides training on how to score the tool and offers score interpretations and recommendations for the different score levels.