Examining Men's Experiences of Abuse From a Female Intimate Partner in Four English-Speaking Countries.

This qualitative study explores the experiences of men who self-report victimization from a female intimate partner in four English-speaking countries. Forty-one men who reported any type of intimate partner abuse (IPA) from a female partner were recruited via targeted advertising in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Twelve online focus groups were conducted across countries using a phenomenologically informed design. Thematic analysis was carried out from an inductive and realist epistemological position and themes identified at a semantic level. This approach was taken to directly reflect the men's experiences and perspectives, ensuring the voices of this hard-to-reach and overlooked population were heard. Three themes were identified across the countries: an imbalanced experience of harm; living with sustained abuse; and knowledge is power for men experiencing IPA. It was found that most participants underwent physical harm in the context of coercive control and experienced abuse over long periods of time. They were slow to recognize the magnitude of their partners' behavior and act upon it for a range of reasons that are described in detail. In addition, promoting knowledge about the victimization of men by women, using appropriate language and active learning, was found to be important in helping the men gain autonomy and agency to break the pattern of abuse and aid their recovery. The implications of the findings for developing male-friendly IPA policy, practice, and services are discussed, in addition to the need for innovative research methodology to access hard-to-reach populations.

Using Technology to Conduct Focus Groups With a Hard-to-Reach Population: A Methodological Approach Concerning Male Victims of Partner Abuse in Four English-Speaking Countries.

Research shows that the experiences of male victims of partner abuse (PA) are often denied by the public and the professionals who are charged to support PA victims. Recruiting female victims for research on PA victimization is relatively easy because there are existing structures to serve this group of victims. Thus, male victims are considered a hard-to-reach (HTR) population, and studying them can be difficult. This article focuses on the use of technology to collect qualitative data from male PA victims in an international study focusing on male victims. The researchers used their own professional networks to recruit and screen a convenience sample of male victims of female-to-male PA, in four different English-speaking countries: Australia, Canada, England, and the United States. Four web-based, video-enabled, focus groups were held for each country-for a total of 12 groups and 41 male participants. This article addresses recruitment methods, the use of technology in data collection, protecting the confidentiality of male victims, methods for informed consent, and lessons learned to facilitate future research.

Security or Safety: Quantitative and Comparative Analysis of Usage in Research Works Published in 2004-2019.

This article is devoted to the statistical analysis of security and safety frequency in the context of categories connected with social institutions and personality features in research works from 2004-2019. Research was based on the following methods: quantitative analysis of safety frequency in the context with coded "categories" related to social institutions and personality features; analysis was conducted with computer-assisted content analysis QDA Miner Lite v. 1.4 and Fisher's F-test. An analysis of 1157 works showed that the terms "security" and "safety" were quantitatively more frequent when used with concepts related to social institutions than with concepts related to personality features. In our opinion, this qualitative trend shows the prevailing significance of social aspects of security over its personal (psychological) traits for research analysis and practical social aspects. The priority usage of the terms "security" and "safety" can be related to the securitization of society, (i.e., to the increased role and significance of social ways of providing security and protection from threats), primarily with the help of external law-enforcing actors such as the state, police, and army. Securitization counterweights the development of social and psychological mechanisms of security-developing motivation for safe behavior, personal self-regulation, and self-production of security as an internal feeling of protection.