Dobash and Dobash’s ethics allowed the women to understand the investigation and whether or not they wanted to expose their feelings towards their abuse. For the women who were actually willing to do this. The relevance of family background, education, childhood and early experiences of violence were part of the chosen questions. This then encouraged the women to adjust or explore the issue as far as they wanted. This ended up producing a more complex out come in the interviews.
Section C. – Reasons for selection of research design.
Ethics were crucial in Dobash and Dobash’s choice of method. They were probing into personal lives of the women and needed a method that gave them time to establish a more personal report. They gained the women’s trust so that their aims could be explored. Dobash and Dobash used experienced and trained researchers to carry out the interviews. Obviously they didn’t want the women to feel more vulnerable and distressed then they already were.
Although reliability is not a high priority in the choice of method, Dobash and Dobash did have a certain degree of structure within the indepth methods that they used. By this I mean having core and standardised questions that could be quantified by Dobash and Dobash to note trends in domestic violence. You could repeat the method. However, it is only repeatable in the context of using trained researchers to revisit areas examined when they met these women previously.
The aims required mainly qualitative data. So indepth interviews would be the most obvious choice to maximise the degree of valid data. Also, fully trained and qualified researchers who were skilled to probe in a gentle manner to access relevant information. This was helped by Dobash and Dobash living in the refuges with the battered women and it enabled them to obtain a valid picture outside the interviews too. Therefore, this further enabled Dobash and Dobash to form a detailed image of their experiences to supplement the impression informed via indepth interviews.
The method chosen and data, was intended to represent specific localities, notably those in Scotland. Furthermore, to represent both young working class and middle class women but not ethnic minorities or other social gaps. Their sample size was fairly large and combining this with having used a qualitive method, subsequently gave them enough scope to make representations within the above context. Finally, the interviews were held in a number of different refuges not just one.
Also, if you put the context into place it also impacts on the generalisations they could have made about the data. Using the indepth interview method may have enabled some generalisations however tentative they may have been to be made about other non participants, especially those in other areas.
Section D
The key findings were:
- The majority of the women believed that the abuse would stop once they were married.
- Conflict within the marriage was largely due to the male’s sexual jealousy.
- Few women responded to the physical attacks that they received.
Ethically, Dobash and Dobash went to great lengths to reassure the women that confidentiality was assured. This including anonymity. The research also implied that a degree of the counselling was done by professionals who formed part of their team. And suggests that they fully considered the feelings of the women throughout the entire research.
The thoroughness to detail as evidenced by the lengths of the interviews and the depth of the interviews, would confirm great attempts were made to get a true picture of the women’s feelings e.t.c it only seems fair to suggest that such subjectivity was needed for maximum validity and this could only have been obtained from this method.
Ethically, we have to take Dobash and Dobash at their word here. A main question against the ethics of Dobash and Dobash would be. Did the women feel obliged to take part not because they wanted to but because they felt they had to because the team were so nice? With this in mind it’s easy to question the ethics behind their research.
So reliability is questionable. Obviously the research method isn’t totally repeatable because of the nature and the sensitivity of the research. And each victim has their own personal interpretation and experience of domestic violence. And, the subjectiveness approach that meant the team didn’t compare the answers with those that their partners may have had given.
Finally, their ability to obtain representative data. One serious drawback to their research is that a lot of domestic violence will go and still goes unreported. So what the police and refuges know about will unlikely be able to be a representative of the real extent of domestic violence and its effects on people. This is no fault of Dobash and Dobash but it means that their research lacks the ability to obtain representative data.
