Establishment of an interpersonal-violence registry system (IPVRS) is a promising initiative to tackle violence. This qualitative study aimed to fill the gap in knowledge regarding the feasibility ...

A Qualitative Study on the Establishment of an Interpersonal Violence Registry System in Iran

The first half of this chapter, rather than reviewing all the relevant theories, focuses on theoretical perspectives of widely used and cited contemporary perspectives. Theoretically, it is important to understand family and intra-family processes within the context of value, norms and beliefs which sets the condition for violence. Scholars have used different theoretical frameworks and perspectives to understand the asymmetrical relationship in family, especially between husband and wife. However, to develop contemporary perspectives, an understanding of the theoretical changes around the concept of gender is required not only with a historical lens but also in terms of cultural context. The second half of this chapter deals with methodological paradigms and approaches related to domestic violence. The chapter offers an overview of several critical methodological issues in researching domestic violence in India. It extends the methodological orientation with how the author operationalized the phenomenon and translated the concept within a multi-cultural location, which can be measured by overcoming cross-cultural differences in conceptualization of problem through scientific data collection methods. In addition, the author discusses a number of ethical issues to protect safety by ensuring informed consent, maintenance of confidentiality of research participants and training of the cross-cultural research team to maximize cultural competency and minimize local bias. The author reviews various tools used by practitioners and researcher to screen frequency, measure the severity and risk for future on domestic violence.

Theoretical and Methodological Issues and Perspectives

In the last two decades, rise of community-based qualitative health research (CBQHR) has given impetus to deliberations on ethics, primarily on inequality between the researcher and the researched, and the principles of flexible and non-deductive field design adopted in CBQHR. The paper attempts to understand ethics as a process of negotiation at various stages in the field after the Research Ethical Board’s (REB’s) approval. The paper identifies three vulnerable stages of ethical negotiations: consent at commencement stage; data-collection stage (interview, observations, and ethnography); and data analysis at the collation stage in the context of a developing economy. Analysis suggests that REBs need to graduate from a product certification to ethical governance process to address the inherent flexibility and inequality that exists between the researcher and researched in developing countries like India.

Meerambika Mahapatro

Papers

Qualitative Research in Public Health: A Cross-Cultural Methodological Issue Pertaining to Domestic Violence in India