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214 | Appendix B Methodology The research presented in this book follows a three-year intensive project featuring multiple data-collection sites across people and sources. Participants were part of Victims’ Voices Heard (VVH), a restorative justice program intended to provide victims of severe violence with the opportunity to prepare for and to have a face-to-face conversation with offenders about their crime and its effects. Since the program began in 2002 through the end date of data collection in 2007, ten victim-offender dialogues occurred (although the VVH program is ongoing). This project explores the experiences and perceptions of the victims and offenders in nine cases—all but one of the total cases completed during the time frame. Qualitative research often focuses on small samples that are selected purposefully in order to understand a phenomenon in greater depth.1 Employing a purposive sample from one specific program allows for very “thick” or “information rich” case studies about the subject of interest, without attempting to generalize empirically from the sample to a population.2 I treat some of the standard methodological issues in the beginning chapters of the book. For instance, chapter 2 covers my interest in restorative justice and my connection to the VVH program. Background information regarding victims’ characteristics, with a particular focus on the VVH program ’s founder, Kim Book, and the story of her daughter’s murder—the catalyst for the creation of VVH—are covered in chapter 3. Despite my lengthy experience with interviewing people who have experienced abuse and violence in their lives, this project presented a number of challenges. My guiding compass was to listen to participants, to do no further harm, and to facilitate reciprocity between myself and the participants in the interests of empowering them to engage actively in the research process . The victims and survivors endured either very severe forms of violent victimization or loss of their loved one to murder or drunk-driving fatali- Appendix B | 215 ties. Kim Book, the VVH coordinator, was often the first person to whom they had confided their deeply private thoughts and experiences, and often their trust in her required months of meetings to develop. As a researcher, my development of rapport with the victims and survivors was complicated by my plan to interview the offenders, whose stories might challenge their versions of the crimes. Or so I thought. Surprisingly, refreshingly, the victims were almost without exception eager to speak to me and encouraged me not only to contact and interview their offenders but also to watch the videotapes of the face-to-face dialogues of their meetings with offenders. The victims shared a compelling need to be heard—to find their voices and to be able to speak about what had happened to them and its consequences and also to reclaim a sense of control over their own choices and destinies. They sought, with great urgency, to break the silence surrounding the crimes and their victimizations and to emerge on the other side as resilient and strong, as survivors. Their determination was apparent in the hard work they did with the VVH program (meeting biweekly with Kim for six months at a minimum, completing extensive paperwork) and in their ability to confront the offenders who had caused them so much pain. In fact, their courage is a lesson in how being persistent is an act of bravery. In following this spirit, my intention during the interviews was to validate their courage and recognize the importance for victims of finally finding their voice about things that happened to them over which they had no control. I made a number of strategic choices as I conducted the research, some of which are atypical for social science research endeavors. First, I deliberately kept participants in control of the process. I left it up to them to decide to how much information—in the form of case files, videotapes, and other records—I had access to. Second, I honored their voice in their stories. It is standard in qualitative research to gain permission (after IRB3 approval) from individual participants to tape-record their stories, with the assurance of protecting confidentiality by not revealing real names or using any identifying information.4 A small number of qualitative researchers take this one step further, allowing participants to review interviews in writing after they are transcribed verbatim.5 I did so, but I went beyond this with an additional step, inviting respondents (victims only, not offenders) to read the...

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