MALE VICTIMS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE Informing Social ... - Amen

To cover a broad area of social work practice, the social workers that participated in
these interviews were from different areas of social work practice, medical social work,
child protection social work and community social work. The individual social workers
were contacted by means of telephone conversation were I asked to speak to a social
worker in relation to domestic violence. I told the social workers about the research I
was carrying out on male victims of domestic violence and asked them did they have
experience with any male victims. This process turned out to be very fruitful, as the
social workers I made contact with new of someone or were willing to participate
themselves in an interview for my research. The down side was that not all of the social
workers had hands on experience in the area of male victims of domestic violence. The
medical social worker had experience of working with clients that were male victim of
domestic violence. The child protection social worker was in the process of working
with her first client that was a male victim and the community social worker had
experience of working with families that would have had violence within the home, but
no direct experience with male victims of domestic violence.
Ethical issues
As domestic violence is an issue that is extremely personal and sensitive, it was quite
clear that my research needed to be conducted with respect and sensitivity for those
involved. Payne and Payne (2004) point out that ethical practice is not a switch that can
be turned on or off when one feels like it, but that it ‘lies at the very heart of research’
beginning to end. It is the responsibility of the researcher to maintain moral conduct
throughout the research.
The acceptability of social research depends increasingly on the
willingness of social researchers to accord respect to their subjects
and to treat them with consideration.
(Research Association’s Ethical Guidelines cited in Denscombe. 2002:175)
In the facilitation and arrangement of the focus group there were a number of
considerations to keep in mind, i.e. the location, did the men mind the focus group being
recorded, would they accept me as a researcher and as a person that they could talk too.
29