Researcher involvement in the research process – a critical reflection

The conduct of an interpretative phenomenological analysis is concerned with the subjective rather than the objective accounts of individual’s (Flowers, Hart, & Marriott, 1999), with the aim of capturing and exploring the meanings that participant’s assign to

249 _{The Skype interview was not incorporated into the final analysis because of a fragmented recording due}

their experiences (Reid, Flowers, & Larkin, 2005). Thus, interpretative phenomenological analysis tends to focus on the exploration of participant’s experience, understandings, perceptions, and views, whereby understanding experience is the “bread and butter” of this methodological approach (Ibid, 2005, p. 20). Coupled with the exploration of the participants self-reflection of their ‘lived experience’ is the subjective and reflective process of interpretation in which the researcher enters during the research process. Described as the double hermeneutic (Smith, et al. 2009), the analyst endeavours to make sense of the participant’s interpretation by emphasising and questioning their meaning- making (Vicary, Young, & Hicks, 2017). As will be demonstrated further in this section, interpreting, and making sense of participant’s data creates specific challenges for the analyst when the topic under study is trying to understand the meanings associated with intimate partner abuse.

To address the issue of researcher bias and influence in qualitative research, what Denzin (1994, p. 501) refers to as “the interpretative crisis”, a reflexive approach to the research process is now widely accepted in qualitative research (Ortlipp, 2008). According to Gilgun (2008) who has worked extensively with both victims and perpetrators of male violence, reflexivity centres around the notion of awareness whereby researchers are being reflexive when they examine and take into consideration the many influences they have on research processes, and how in turn, research processes affect researchers and their participants. Gilgun notes three examples of reflexive processes that include firstly, participant and researcher experience of the research process, secondly, relationships between researchers and participants, and lastly, changes both parties may experience during participation in the research.

This chapter proceeds to examine the reflexive processes set out by Gilgun (2008) from the perspective of the researcher.

In the absence of a professional services background working with victims and survivors of intimate partner abuse, the principles of an interpretative phenomenological analysis guided my research with the participants. I opened myself up to each narrative on a case by case basis and reflected upon the personal meanings of their stories. This reflection by the researcher was captured during the analysis phase of data collection where transcripts were annotated creating an audit trail (Vicary et al., 2017) of the researcher's reflections. In retrospect, not having a professional background in either social work or the domestic and sexual violence support services worked to my advantage during the research process. I didn’t approach the interviews with a pre-conceived idea of what a ‘domestic violence’ relationship should look like. At the stage when I was interviewing participants, I had very much immersed myself in the literature around female-to-female intimate partner abuse and I had come to the knowledge that the experience of being in an abusive relationship could affect any person, irrespective of their biological sex or their sexuality. However, the interview questions and the specific themes explored during interviews were developed by the researcher and did influence the types of data that was gathered during the research process.

I developed a deep sense of respect and admiration for the participants as I acknowledged their previous abuse histories and their strength in overcoming multiple adversities and subsequent negative impacts, in some cases, with little or no support from their families. I was amazed by the participants and their willingness to share their experiences of abuse. Not only did they want to share their experiences, they hoped that the telling of their stories would help others in similar circumstances. This latter point has been found to be a motivating factor in disclosures of abuse and sexual violence in previous work with both heterosexual and non-heterosexual women (Campbell & Adams, 2009; Girshick, 2002; Ristock, 2002). When I conveyed what I had learned to both student and professional audiences, I witnessed the impact their stories had. For these mixed audiences, the participant's stories appeared to have contributed to new ways of thinking about ‘domestic violence', new understandings of what constitutes ‘domestic violence' and what constitutes sexual violence in terms of who can and cannot perpetuate this form of violence.

One of the main emotional impacts I experienced was around disclosures of sexual violence. I was aware of this aspect of abuse in lesbian relationships from the existing literature, however, this does not prepare you for hearing of such experiences first-hand,

and the severe long-term impacts of this type of abuse on women’s lives. During interviews, some participants provided intimate details of the experience of sexual violence. However, others disclosed their experience of sexual violence, but they found it extremely difficult to articulate precisely how the sexual violence had manifested. Based on the participant’s behaviour during the interviews, the difficulty with disclosing this form was of abuse was very evident to the researcher. Consequently, in some cases, I was unable to probe the participant about this specific aspect of their abusive experience. To probe further felt too intrusive, like I was over-stepping a line. Having reflected on this experience, I came to understand that in not probing the participants further about their experiences of sexual violence, I was protecting myself first as such details of this type of abuse were too much for me to hear and absorb. In agreement with Gilgun’s (2008) experiences and her inability to probe a sexually violent male perpetrator, I had not the stomach to ask for these details during the interview process.

The relationship between researcher and participant

Gender is a significant dimension of the reflexive process (Gilgun, 2008). In research concerned with female victims of female perpetrated violence, my position as a lesbian- identified woman assisted in my ability to connect with the participants. Our experience of being non-heterosexual was the starting point of conversation before the formal interviews began. I have a keen interest in Irish LGBT social and cultural history and this interest was shared by the older participants in the study who would have been a part of both the Women's and the lesbian and gay movements of the early 1980s. This shared interest, connected by our sexualities, contributed to building rapport with participant's both prior and after the formal interviews. Furthermore, my position as a lesbian woman growing up in Ireland during a period when being a non-heterosexual male was a criminal offence, allowed me to empathise with the participants and their experience of concealing a lesbian sexual identity. In this instance, I felt like what feminists describe as a ‘connected knower’ as I used my emotions, cognitions, memories, and personal experiences as a strategy for understanding (Gilgun, 1982).

Similar to the experience of Gilgun (2008) in her exploration of male perpetrators of violence, the participant’s narratives allowed the researcher to understand that their female partners, who were perpetrating violence against them, had multiple dimensions to who they were. This resulted in the researcher experiencing first anger and then sympathy for their aggressive partners. For example, there was a period during the transcription phase when I felt anger toward the participant’s abusive partners but as the research progressed and my knowledge of the topic expanded, I found myself feeling sympathy for the partners. On reflection, I experienced sympathy because they were unable to love themselves for who they were and because they had grown up in contexts where their sexuality was pathologised and stigmatised. There is also an acute awareness now at the end of four years of study that there are very limited support options available in Ireland for female perpetrators. Any attempts to tackle the issue of female same sex IPA needs to be inclusive of women who are abusive in relationships.

Conclusion: Chapter four

This research set out to explore the experience of lesbian IPA (LIPA) for Irish women. Ethical approval to conduct the study was received from the Research Ethics Committee of the Department of Social Work & Social Policy in Trinity College Dublin. The research design was exploratory in nature and involved the collection of qualitative data using semi- structured in-depth interviews. A multi-pronged approach to recruitment was engaged with to generate awareness of the study and participation involving both convenience and purposive sampling strategies. The focus of the interviews was on exploring the experience of IPA, as well as help-seeking behaviours in response to IPA. Interviews were analysed using an interpretative phenomenological analytical approach. In total, nine women volunteered and were interviewed for the study.

Having outlined the methodological approach, the thesis now moves on to describe the key findings from the study. Research examining IPA has tended to be over-reliant on quantitative methodological approaches that lack the detailed and contextual information necessary to understand the complexity of the phenomenon (Corbally, et al., 2016). At the present time, little is known about the personal experience of LIPA. This study provides an in-depth insight into the experience of LIPA for nine women. The shame and

embarrassment associated with being a survivor of IPA coupled with being a part of a historically marginalised group create challenges with access to LGBT samples (Owen & Burke, 2004; West, 2002). Regardless of the size of the sample, it is the voices of survivors of lesbian women that are crucial to expanding knowledge of this phenomenon (Giorgio, 2002; Walters, 2011).

The findings of the present study are drawn from the voices of nine survivors of lesbian partner abuse. In recognition of the small sample size, it is not claimed that these accounts are representative of all women who have experienced intimate partner abuse from another female. Notwithstanding this limitation, the study’s findings are in accord with the findings of previous research as will be demonstrated in the following chapters.

5

CHAPTER FIVE: PARTICIPANT ACCOUNTS OF IPA

This chapter, which charts the beginning of a total of four findings chapters, describes the experience of intimate partner abuse (IPA) for the nine participants in the study. The participants’ accounts provide evidence of the experience of multiple forms and combinations of abusive behaviours. The participants provided accounts of experiencing emotional/psychological, physical, sexual, financial, and identity abuse, and abuses that are also found to continue post-separation.

As mentioned in Chapter 3, recent empirical evidence in the UK by Donovan and Hester (2014) suggests that ‘practices of love’ (POL) enacted by victims and abusers form part of the abuse in relationships because they serve to confuse, manipulate, and cement the couple together. The findings from the current thesis concur with the role of POL found in recent UK research, as such, the concept is utilised in the current thesis to describe the complexities of violence and abuse in lesbian relationships, and to further expand knowledge on the dynamics of power in an abusive lesbian relationship.

The chapter proceeds by providing a synopsis of the demographic and relationship profile of the study’s participants. The section that follows considers the concept of practices of love, as enacted by both the participants and their partners. A more detailed account of both the coercive controlling non-violent and the physically violent behaviours experienced by the participants is presented thereafter. The final part of the chapter examines the distinct experience of identity abuse as experienced by participants to show how abusers in female same sex relationships use a person’s lesbian identity and their out status to abuse and control.250

250 _{Although this research has adopted the framework of Coercive Control to understand abusive behaviours}

in the participant’s relationships, the chapter will list the abusive behaviours, similar to typologies of an abusive experience. The researcher felt this was necessary due to the paucity of LIPA research in Ireland.