Ola W. Barnett is a Distinguished Professor Emerita of Psychology at Pepperdine University, Malibu, California. She earned her undergraduate and doctoral degrees in Psychology at UCLA, specializing in Learning. Her initial research centered on batterers, and she later studied battered women and dating violence. She has coauthored two best-selling Sage books (with Alyce D. LaViolette) on why battered women stay with abusive partners. These books provide a scientific explanation, grounded in learning theory, for understanding the obstacles battered women face in trying to break free. She remains active in the field of family violence by reviewing articles for a large number of journals and performing as an external grant reviewer for a few organizations. She serves on the editorial board of the new journal, Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice. She also continues research on the impact of transitional housing on the lives of battered women. Robin D. Perrin is currently Professor of Sociology at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. His research interests and publications are in the areas of interpersonal violence, deviance theory, the social construction of social problems, and the sociology of religion. He is the coauthor of three books: Social Deviance: Being, Behaving, and Branding (with D. Ward & T. Carter, 1991), Child Maltreatment: An Introduction (with C. Miller-Perrin, Sage, 1999; 2007), and Family Violence Across the Lifespan (with O. Barnett & C. Miller-Perrin, Sage, 1997, 2005; 2011). He is the author or coauthor of numerous articles on a variety of topics related to religion, deviance, and interpersonal violence. He is the recipient of the 2004 Howard A. White Award for Teaching Excellence. He received his doctorate in sociology from Washington State University in 1989. Following his doctoral studies he was Assistant Professor of Sociology at Seattle Pacific University in Seattle, Washington.
