You might ask Patricia Smith who works for the Michigan Department of Community Health

Could you give her email id so that i can discuss with her

Family violence is a very relevant and crucial area in sociological research. You must contextualise this issue before having familiarity with concepts associated with it.

A qualitative study through (focus-group or open ended interviews) will be ideal to know the impact and determinants of violence against women. Particularly, suitable for communities in Tamil Nadu. Think of research questions-Is it Alcohol influence on women violence, or correlates of violence or economic evaluation.

You can capture the impact of family violence on different aspects, like the health of women, on labour force participation etc. I think you must visit the WHO website, there you will find the project details under the title "Domestic Violence and Women Health". The reports, questionnaire, and other materials are available to you on request. I am also doing the research on domestic violence under the Gender Equity Program.

I hope this will help you. Good Luck with your research

Dear Colleages, thank you for all your suggestions and today i will meet my prof and discuss about all these. i also brainstormed and thought to be specific - so i thought i could analyse the situation of children those who were affected by domestic violence. still brainstormings, your suggestions are most welcome.

Hi Vanjana, you can do much more in indian context. The Acts for women and their implementation has a large scope to study. You can also study for the un-organized woman community. Before some days I presented a research paper at University of Riverside, California on Woman in Higher Education and the study was very interesting. The study on woman reservation is so common but you can take some different variables.

......Just start, you will get ideas

Priti Pohekar, India

Thank you for your all suggestions and explanations. I am doing my PhD titled women empowerment through micro credit in Sri Lanka. Could you please help me to find out the theory or model to my research? I am going to take the mixed method analysis. Please help me by giving suggestions and recommendations.

Hi friends,

i have almost finalised the topic - "Coping Strategies of Domestic violence victims in Theni District, Tamilnadu, South India". samples will be drawn from the government who has been registered the cases under domestic violence act. reviewing last five years cases. Please suggest me about the methodologies and analysis part. your views are welcome

Are you still working on this?

Very much

Correct me vanajaa, you are interested if you are reviewing the registered cases in past five years then how do you measure the coping strategy of the victim? Does the government department keep a standardized interview form to measure how she coped or are you going to interview the victims by getting thier records and address from government?

I would assume that reported cases will make a selective sample as off course coming and reporting the violence will in itself be a coping mechanism, so if you are focused on coping mechanism then you need to focus on psychological construct of coping with life stressful situations and if you need reasons of violence then it would be alcohol, poverty, no of kids to be fed and even love or arrange marriage. so focus what really you need to measure. I think what we researchers need is to be realistic and see what data can we get in as at this point in time, so see what you can easy gather than going for what topic seems flowery . regards, Shazia

Vanajaa, I am sorry to say that I don't have any handy suggestions for measuring coping strategies, but that will be very important to your study. You might find Murray Strauss's Conflict Tactic's Scale somewhat helpful for finding out about the relationship itself. I am mostly writing to say I think you have selected an excellent topic. You asked about methodologies. I would assume a mostly structured interview using standardized measures like the Conflict Tactic Scales on the important aspects, but certainly including coping measures. Because your study and population are probably pretty novel, part of your strudy might be some in-depth qualitative interviewing also perhaps more so at the beginning of the study to learn from these women (sometimes done with a similar sample from another location depending on how large the number in your target population is) about coping before you narrow down to specific measures (or you may have to create your own to suit your unique population).Even after you have done initial qualitative phase you might want to maintain some open-ended questions in your interviews to make sure you capture the real variety of the coping that might be missed by the measures. This is very exciting work. Bob

Dear Shazia and Robert

Thank you for your valuable inputs. i am seriously thinking about inputs.

Ms.Shazia, in tamilnadu we have protection officers under tamilnadu social welfare board in all the districts to register only domestic violence cases and register under DV act 2005. so i will get the addresses and case details from the dept and have direct interview with them . have to concentrate more on the questionnaire.

Please give your inputs and guidance which are very valuable to me to proceed.

Vanajaa, i think you will have to make a new questionnaire. I suggest make a consent form for women to agree to participate in research, then take a group of 15 women as a focus group and ask them focused questions on how they coped with violence, i.e., did they talk about it, did they take any precautions, etc. You need to divide questions in three parts in my view could be more though a. Physical action taken to cope with abuse, e.g, seeing a doctor or psychologist, b. Social support mechanism, did they talk to someone parents, friends or close ones, c. emotional and psychological coping mechanisms used, i.e., prayer, talking to a priest etc . If you take lets say 10 questions for each category then you will have a questionnaire comprising of 30 questions. Questions that do not get you any answers in the focus group need to be thrown out. Also take input from social welfare board people on what coping mechanisms they usually see in women and add it in your questionnaire.

Get the questionnaire filled by at least 25 women and run an internal consistency, validity and reliability test. This way you will get an indigenous questionnaire made which can be used in your own research and also a valuable instrument for other researchers also. Actually developing the indeginous questionnaire could be your pilot study expanded later. We from third world usually look for a culturally biased already made instrument to be used, take the initiative and make the instrument. In Pakistan we made a Rorschach Ink Blot test at Quaid-e-Azam University well suited to Pakistani responses and diagnosis. So go ahead and if you need any help will be my pleasure

Hope not making your work difficult:)

Hi Vanajaa! Hi Shazia!

I think is good idea to use focus group in the first step of research. I am using it in my doctoral work and I find it very usefull! I have an article in this topic: "Focus Group discussion as tool to study gender relations in urban community members"... I hope that helps you ; )

Hello Medina,

thanks for the suggestion. will you please send the article to my email id - [email protected]

Dear Shazia,

i am thinking about your suggestion and meeting my guide next week end. will let you know later.

Dear Vanajaa,

Ok, I will send you!

it is very good research topic . you have to study Socio-Economical variable and Intelligence factor and personality variables of Family who committed violence on women

Hi asha,

it will be very difficult to find out the factors and the angle will be very different. so i am trying to limit myself with coping strategies

Family violence is a good topic. I will suggest to explore the violence by men and women both. Because Human beings are violent and aggressive and women are not an exception to it (Maguire, 2010; Dobash & Dobash, 2004). Research in the field of domestic violence has shown that men and women act violently in relationships at

about the same rate. Furthermore, men and women are equally likely to

instigate violence against one another. The truth is surprisingly egalitarian:

About half of all domestic violence occurs with both partners abusing each

other (Corry, Fiebert, & Pizzey, 2002).

Hope this will help. to get more on it, follow http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10911359.2012.655988

Your topics may comes under domestic violence.you will get most of the literature in the libraries and online.

My doctoral dissertation was on domestic violence over 10 yrs ago. There is a lot to write and interrogate therein.

I am doing 'Women empowerment through micro credit on self employment' to my PhD programme and analyze the women empowerment at household level and community level. the domestic violence also one of the variable at household level. My sample is women headed households and who are suffering from various issues in my country. If I will do this topic iIn my country It will be 'violence against women' it may be domestic and community violence. You can decide which is suitable in your country. And I appreciate your comments on this regards.

Dear Badru, thank you for your comments, can you share your thesis, would be good to know. pls

Rathiranee, thank you for your sharing. i am actually doing violence against women

Hi

gone through the discussion from the beginning.

I think you may review existing coping scales to understand the underlying constructs and prepare indicators, to make your tool measurable and authentic.