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Women Speak: The value of community-based research on woman abuse
Document Brief
The Ontario Rural Woman Abuse Study (ORWAS), undertaken by Justice Canada and the Community Abuse Program of Rural Ontario in 1997, is a study of domestic violence in a rural context. The study adopted a community-based, feminist methodology and as such recruited volunteer community researchers - some with little previous research experience - to interview survivors of violent intimate relationships. Following the completion of the ORWAS project, it was recommended that the research process employed for ORWAS be studied with a view to assessing the impact of participation in the study on all who were involved. This report is the product of the study of the research process. To evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the study's methodology, four of the six original community researchers were interviewed, along with 21 survivors and three project leaders. All of the interviewees felt that the benefits of, participating in the study outweighed the drawbacks. The survivors spoke of gains in self-confidence as a result of participation, and of being given the opportunity to help and heal other women. The community researchers felt that they had gained a great deal through their participation in the research. Despite concerns about delays, funding and data analysis, project leaders felt the community approach resulted in the collection of data of greater quality and depth. As one leader put it, "The impulse for me to engage in this kind of methodology is that it hopefully exploits the respondents less and creates opportunities for the participants to continue whatever constructive process might happen along the way."
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