The Praxis Safety and Accountability Audit: Practicing a “Sociology for People”

Abstract

Ellen Pence has crafted the Praxis Safety and Accountability Audit (Safety Audit) on the social change foundation of the battered women’s movement, the idea of a coordinated community response to domestic violence, and institutional ethnography’s emphasis on asking questions from the standpoint of people in their everyday lives. Conducted by an interagency team of advocates and practitioners, the Safety Audit uses interviews, observations, and text analysis to examine the ways in which institutions standardize and coordinate workers’ actions to produce interventions and outcomes that enhance or diminish safety for battered women and their children. With the Safety Audit, Pence has provided a new and distinctive tool for community change.