Women Speak: The Value of Community-Based Research on Woman Abuse

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Origins of Women Speak: The Value of Community-Based Research on Woman Abuse

A community-based research project to study rural woman abuse (Ontario Rural Woman Abuse Study: ORWAS) was implemented in the fall of 1997. It was part of an initiative of the Department of Justice Canada in partnership with the Community Abuse Program of Rural Ontario (CAPRO). Health Canada supplied interdepartmental financial support for the initiative. The ORWAS project was used as the backdrop to the present study, which examines the value of community-based methodology in research on woman abuse.

Community-Based methods such as that used in the ORWAS project recognise that the people who live in a community may hold different perspectives on an issue than people who look at the community from the outside. Therefore, in order for research to get a clear understanding of an issue in a community, it is important to involve people from the community in the design of the study, and in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of the data.

For many of the women involved in the ORWAS project, it was their first experience with community-based research. The choice of a community-based method entailed significant commitments of time and resources on the part of all those involved. The research team found that the project evolved in a dynamic way as a result of the group process. It demanded great flexibility from all members of the team and yielded rich rewards in terms of the relationships that developed among the team members.

It was this dynamic process and its effects on the participants that captured the interest of Health Canada and prompted the decision to do a follow-up study on ORWAS, which is the present Women Speak: The Value of Community-Based Research on Woman Abuse. One of the ORWAS community researchers, Mary Nelder, was interested in exploring the impact this unique process had on both the research team and the participating survivors. Her discussions with survivors in the Espanola area suggested that the project had made a significant impression on some of the women who had participated. Along with her associate, Susan Snelling, she approached the other community researchers and project leaders with a proposal to initiate a follow-up study that would examine the ORWAS process and explore its effects on all of the participants. The follow-up study would also explore the implications of the ORWAS experience for research on family violence more generally.

With the support of the research team, the Women Speak: The Value of Community-Based Research on Woman Abuse project began in January 1999 under the joint sponsorship of Justice Canada and Health Canada. It examined the community-based process used in ORWAS from the perspectives of the project leaders from Justice Canada and CAPRO, the community researchers, and the women survivors who participated. Throughout this report, the Women Speak: The Value of Community-Based Research on Woman Abuse project will be referred to as the “follow-up” project to distinguish it from the original ORWAS project.

The objectives of the Women Speak: The Value of Community-Based Research on Woman Abuse project were: 1) to review the research process developed through ORWAS and draw some conclusions about the value of a community-based approach; 2) to investigate the effects of participating in woman abuse research on the survivors, community researchers, and project leaders; and 3) to examine the benefits to government departments and communities of a collaborative partnership.

Although the ORWAS study was used as a case study for these questions, the implications of the findings go beyond ORWAS. The findings and conclusions, therefore, will be of interest to community-based organisations, women’s groups, government researchers and the academic community.

1.2 Background on the Purpose and Methodology of ORWAS

The ORWAS project sought to understand issues of violence against women in rural areas. Because most studies of domestic violence have been based in urban areas, the ORWAS study was developed as part of a strategy to understand and better respond to women living with abuse in rural areas specifically. The purpose of the project was two-fold: to obtain a better understanding of the unique challenges for rural women experiencing violence; and second, to identify the particular and appropriate supports and interventions that were effective for rural women living with abuse.

Because it was imperative that the research skills came from and were kept in the community, CAPRO recruited six community researchers from rural areas across Ontario (representing South Eastern, South Central, South Western, North Eastern, North Central and North Western areas of the province). Previous research experience was not necessary since these community researchers were to be trained by the principal researchers from Justice Canada. It was considered vitally important that all community researchers be comfortable with the material and the process before commencing the data collection phase. Three training sessions were held in the fall and winter of 1997-98, prior to the data collection process. During the data collection phase of the project, conference calls allowed the research team to keep in contact. Justice Canada, with additional support from Health Canada, contributed funding for community researcher honoraria and travel expenses, and also provided in-kind supports such as research materials and conference calls.

The team of six community researchers, two Justice Canada researchers and the co-ordinator of CAPRO jointly developed the research scope, themes and interview guides. Each community researcher then interviewed ten women from her community who had survived a violent relationship. The term ‘survivor’ in this document refers to the women who were interviewed for the ORWAS project. These survivors are women who have experienced a violent intimate relationship, have been living without violence for at least one year, and were not involved in any court action.

In an effort to broaden the scope of the study, the community researchers also conducted two or three focus groups with local service providers, community members and community leaders. Each researcher contacted the nearest shelter to inform them of the study and to solicit their support. All six shelters were supportive, some offering space, others referrals, others participating in the focus groups.

The interviews with the survivors and focus groups were tape-recorded and sent to Ottawa for transcription by Justice Canada staff. Transcribers were instructed to remove any references that could identify the participants. Each survivor’s transcript was returned to her for editing, if she chose to do so. Tapes were also returned to the participants if they requested them; if not, they were destroyed. Once edited, the transcripts of the interviews and focus groups were used as the data for the project.

After all the transcripts had been returned to the community researchers, each researcher identified themes arising from her data. The community researchers then came together in Ottawa in the spring of 1998 to discuss the process, identify common themes and analyse findings.

It was decided that participants needed to receive something back fairly quickly which reflected their participation and captured the specific issues that were identified in each community. Using a common framework, the community researchers wrote individual community draft reports. Conference calls once again kept the team in touch while they wrote the individual community reports. These drafts were distributed to the survivors for their feedback. The community reports were completed by the end of 1998 and were distributed to the participants and community organisations.

The ORWAS team met again to present their findings for the first time publicly at the Communities against Violence conference organised by CAPRO in December 1998. In a workshop following this conference, researchers reflected on the research process, discussed the contents of the upcoming synthesis report, and identified possible future directions. In 1999, a synthesis report was written (In Press), describing the ORWAS project and uniting the findings from the six communities into a single report on rural woman abuse.

The methodology developed for ORWAS was replicated in two rural sites in British Columbia. A list of all reports related to ORWAS, including the community reports, the synthesis report and the BC report, can be found in Appendix A.

1.3 Methodology of Women Speak: The Value of Community-Based Research on Woman Abuse

In the follow-up to ORWAS, four of the original six community researchers were interviewed. Mary Nelder, who initiated and conducted this follow-up study with her associate, Susan Snelling, had been one of the six community researchers, but because of her role as researcher in the follow-up study, she was not interviewed as one of the community researchers. Circumstances did not allow one other community researcher to take part in this follow-up project.

A conference call to discuss the research aspects of the ORWAS project was conducted in January 1999 with the community researchers. Subsequently, individual telephone interviews that centred on the personal implications of the project were conducted in January and February.

The community researchers were then asked to contact the survivors they had interviewed for the ORWAS study to ask them to participate in the follow-up study. The community researchers were provided with information, response cards and stamped envelopes to distribute to women who agreed to consider participating. The survivors could choose to respond by mailing back a response card giving a first name and telephone number. This process mimicked the recruitment process used in ORWAS and, therefore, was familiar to the survivors.

As noted, one community researcher did not take part in the follow-up. As a result, the ten survivors she interviewed for the ORWAS project could not be asked to participate in the follow-up study, because our contact with survivors was made through the community researchers. Therefore, the pool of survivors from which the follow-up study drew was smaller than anticipated (50 rather than 60). Replies were received from survivors from all the remaining areas covered by the ORWAS study. Telephone interviews were completed in February and March 1999, with all of the 21 women who responded.

The two project leaders from Justice Canada were interviewed individually by telephone in March 1999. A telephone interview was also conducted with the co-ordinator of CAPRO.

The interviews followed a semi-structured format, following a standard set of questions concerning the project objectives (see below). The interviewer varied from the suggested questions as necessary to explore emerging issues, clarify the meaning of the question, or probe for clarification of an answer. The questions were asked in an order that flowed from the content of the interview, rather than in a prescribed order.

Interview Themes for Women Survivors

Interview Themes for Community Researchers

Interview Themes for Project Leaders

Each researcher transcribed the verbatim from each of the interviews that she had conducted. Data were analysed in terms of themes emerging from the interviews concerning each objective. Based on the themes covered in the interview questions, each interview transcript was coded in terms of the theme addressed in each comment. In some cases, more than one theme was addressed in a single comment. Other themes that had not been part of the initial questions were also coded. The coded transcripts were then sorted, so that the portions of the interview that dealt with each objective and theme were categorised together. From this sorted data, representative quotations were identified and are presented in this document under each objective.

1.4 Structure of Report

The remainder of this report describes and analyses the findings of the follow-up study. First, an overview of the outcomes of the Women Speak: The Value of Community-Based Research on Woman Abuse project is presented in terms of the three objectives. Interview material is then presented separately for each group: survivors, community researchers and project leaders. Discussion of this material, and recommendations based on analysis of the interviews follows, and is organised around the objectives. The report finishes with a concluding section.