Domestic Violence: Methodologies in Dialogue

Introduction

Introduction This volume brings together various methodologies of inquiry within the social sciences that expose and sensitize students to research, policy, and substantive issues in domestic abuse or intimate partner violence—issues that have a direct impact on people’s lives.* Research in intimate partner violence has—and still is—hotly debated by researchers, policy makers, legislators, and activists. Indeed, many believe that the high stakes involved make any inquiry on this subject matter unavoidably political. Consequently, this volume illustrates not only the methodologies used to study intimate partner violence but also how the methods, results, and interpretative frames can inform current debates and, vice versa, how current debates can affect researchers’ agenda and preferences. This volume is divided into four parts, each of which broadly represents important facets of partner violence research. Within each part, two studies using different methodologies that address a similar research question are presented. Each chapter is preceded by learning objectives that focus on increasing the reader’s methodological framework and contextualizing this framework within the broader study of sex and gender. Following each chapter, critical-thinking questions help to stimulate a broader discussion on methods, results, and interpretative frames. The critical-thinking questions are divided into general and advanced, giving flexibility to the instructor to assign more difficult questions to advanced students. Each part also concludes with a commentary, in which we explicitly adopt the stance that no one methodology is superior to the other, with the view to both synthesize and unpack the implicit assumptions, implications , and consequences of the individual chapters’ methodological choices. We believe this is important because in real life a method alone is only as relevant *Abuse against an intimate partner or spouse has been referred to by a variety of related terms, including domestic violence, intimate partner violence, intimate partner abuse, dating violence, and spousal abuse. In this book, authors approach the issue using any or some of these labels, as customary within their field. vii viii | Introduction as the question it is trying to answer, the question is sometimes constrained by the available methodology, and, all things being equal, the question can have different meanings when posed to different populations. The commentaries and critical-thinking question also emphasize a key theme throughout this text—that all research decisions are tied to some philosophical belief, whether or not we realize it (Slife and Williams, 1995). The internal structure of the book is intended to facilitate teaching and presenting its main points, both methodologically and conceptually with respect to how one might address partner violence in and of itself as a phenomenon. Accordingly, we introduce the reader to definitions and measurements of partner violence (part 1: What Is Domestic Violence and How Do We Measure It?), various ways to read and interpret claims about gender parity and asymmetry data (part 2: Claims about Gender Parity and Domestic Violence: Six Blind Men and an Elephant), same sex violence (part 3: Dating Violence among Sexual Minorities) and the complex role of the criminal justice system on survivors (part 4: Systemic Revictimization). Further, to broaden the scope of students’ exposure to different approaches within the social sciences and more specifically , psychology, clinical psychologists from the United States were matched with forensic psychologists from Brazil in part 1; clinical psychologists with a sociologist/social worker and community psychologists in part 2; a clinical psychologist and social policy analyst in part 3; and a psychoanalyst with the same social worker now writing as an expert forensic evaluator in part 4. The book concludes with a chapter by Keith A. Markus and others that interrogates the separation between quantitative and qualitative methods. While a primary goal of this book is to expose students to applications of different research methodologies, such a discussion cannot be separated from the substantive concerns regarding partner violence. Thus, while contrasting various methodologies within the field of intimate partner violence research, the chapters of this book also illustrate crucial debates in the field. Among the ever-present debates that permeate this book is whether intimate partner violence is a gendered, culture-bound, or class-based phenomenon or whether it is a relatively universal phenomena that does not vary significantly across different groups. We do not try to comprehensively cover all points in these debates, but rather flesh out the key arguments and explicate them sufficiently to make the newcomers into the field familiar with the larger context and climate in which this research is being conducted today. A general understanding of...