Transcript Methods for Studying Family Violence First things

What is SOCIOLOGY??
One of the youngest “sciences”
 Sociological methods have attempted to recreate the key tenets of natural science
methods in the social world:
a. Objectivity
b. Generalizability
c. Repeatability
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Discovered the laws of
inheritance as they
relate to dominant and
recessive genes.
He “fudged” his data in
order to make a real
finding more compelling
This is the reason natural
science and social
science are based on the
principle of objectivity.
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Random assignment: the process by which
subjects are assigned to their conditions
“randomly” rather than based on some
quality or characteristic that they have.
Manipulation of the independent variable: In
order to isolate the cause of a change, the
researcher must be controlling the variation
in the independent variable and not
allowing it to vary on its own.
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Control of third variables: allows the
researcher to isolate the independent
variable they are changing in order to be
certain that it is the single cause of
the change in the dependent
variable.
In order to truly test the intergenerational
transmission of violence thesis, social
scientists would have to identify hundreds of
children at birth
 Randomly assign them to a condition—either
exposure to violence in childhood or no
exposure to violence in childhood
 Then track their experiences with violence in
adulthood.
 This however is not plausible.
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Drawing correlation conclusions: indications
or evidence that events coexist.
 Sampling
 Interviews and surveys:
 Face-to-face interviews
 Qualitative research:
generate descriptive data
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An African American
woman who was
interviewed in North
Carolina.
 She grew up in a liquor
house.
 This arrangement
usually involves
exchange for sex.
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1. ETHNOGRAPHY
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2. OBSERVATIONAL METHODS
Examples related to family violence would include:
Volunteering at a shelter for battered women and their
children and observing the experiences of the women and
their children as they attempt to escape the violence
OR sitting in an emergency room at a local hospital to observe
the kinds of injuries that victims of domestic violence or child
abuse seek treatment for.
STRENGTHS
WEAKNESSES
Produced by the subjects
themselves rather than their
experiences being forced or
may not really capture these
experiences accurately.
 Provide opportunities for
researchers to see the
violence or to hear about it in
the subject’s own voice and
interpreted through his or her
own framework.
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Replicability and
generalizability
 And of importance to our
discussion here is the fact
that when the phenomenon
itself is strongly shaped by
power—in this case gender
and age—the biases of the
researcher can be even more
damaging to the integrity of
the study.
IN THEIR OWN EXPERIENCE
They conducted an interview with an African
American woman who lived in a shelter for
battered women.
 When she spoke about the violence in her home
she looked exclusively at Hattery (white woman)
as if Smith (black man) was not in the room.
 When she spoke of her neighborhood and
described how white people would only come
around if they needed drugs she would look only
at Smith.
 Based on RACE or GENDER
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Epistemology refers to “ways of knowing.”
The way we “know” things is significantly
shaped by our social location—our place in
the world.
Regardless of their individual experiences,
women and men have different “ways of
knowing” about sexual abuse and rape.
 This knowledge is likely to influence every
aspect of the research process, including the
choice of research questions, the selection of
subjects, the methods chosen, and the
analysis.
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Definition: techniques or strategies for
collecting numeric data—and usually vast
quantities of it—that require statistical
techniques in order to analyze it.
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Majority of sociological research is survey
research
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Two types of surveys used to generate data
about various forms of family violence: selfreport research and crime reports
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In the last twelve months has your partner
ever hit you with an object?
Yes No
(1) Random digit dialing or RDD: combines
the survey with computer technology that
aids in both the sampling and the
administration of the survey.
 The survey is loaded into a computer system,
and a trained phone interviewer administers
the survey to respondents over the telephone
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(2) Generate data on family violence is
conducted by government and law enforcement
agencies
 Bureau of Justice Statistics the government
clearinghouse for all data related to crime, the
criminal justice system, law enforcement, and
corrections, conducts the National Crime
Victimization Survey (NCVS) every six months.
 Uniform Crime Reports require that all law
enforcement agencies send a “report” each
month directly to the FBI
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STRENGHTS
WEAKNESSES
Standard questions offer the
possibility for replication
 Allows scholars and policy
makers to estimate the
prevalence of various types of
family violence both overall
and in distinct populations.
 nonprofit agencies that serve
victims
 and provide intervention
services for offenders rely on
these numbers
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Numbers tell a different kind
of “story” than the stories
told by individual men,
women, and children.
 designed to elicit standard
responses to short questions
or statements and very rarely
include the kinds of questions
that will elicit detailed
responses.
 do not include measures of
frequency
 Ecological fallacy
The most widely utilized and most controversial
of the large-scale surveys that have been utilized
to measure family violence.
 Many criticisms on it
 Studies that rely on the CTS alone, by failing to
distinguish between certain types of violence,
frequency, level of injury, and so on, may tend to
overestimate situational couple violence and
underestimate intimate terrorism
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