Hindawi Publishing Corporation Advances in Nursing Volume 2014, Article ID 801740, 12 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/801740
Review Article An Integrative Review of the Methods Used to Research the Prevalence of Violence against Women in Pakistan Farhana Irfan Madhani,1 Catherine Tompkins,1 Susan M. Jack,2 and Anita Fisher1 1 2
School of Nursing, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, ON, Canada L8S 4K1 School of Nursing, Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, ON, Canada L8S 4K1
Correspondence should be addressed to Farhana Irfan Madhani;
[email protected] Received 19 February 2014; Accepted 11 July 2014; Published 7 September 2014 Academic Editor: Ann M. Mitchell Copyright © 2014 Farhana Irfan Madhani et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This paper is a report of an integrative review conducted to assess the methodological and ethical strategies used to protect participants and researchers in conducting violence against women (VAW) studies in Pakistan. The measurement of the prevalence of violence against women in Pakistan is challenging for researchers given the cultural norms and the traditional role of women. Lack of methodological rigor in addressing the concerns can result in underreporting of violence, create physical and emotional risk for the participants, interviewers, and researchers, and impose threats to internal and external validity of VAW studies. Using Whittemore and Knafl’s process for conducting an integrative review, 11 studies published between 1999 and 2012, reporting on prevalence, experiences, and factors associated with violence in a marital relationship were analyzed. Overall, studies reveal an underreporting of exposure to violence and threats to women and interviewers’ safety in the conduct of such studies, both of which present threats to study rigor. The utilization of WHO ethical and safety recommendations to guide VAW studies in this context should be considered.
1. Introduction Over the past three decades, there has been increasing international attention to measuring rates of violence against women (VAW) in different countries [1]. Some of these studies also focus on the development and evaluation of identification and intervention strategies. Researchers who examine gender-based violence to better identify the extent of violence, its causes, consequences, and subsequent interventions are faced with several challenges [2, 3]. For example, the estimated prevalence of VAW among, between and within countries, regions and cultures is hampered due to variations in how VAW is conceptualized and defined and how the studies are implemented [4, 5]. Moreover, researchers have identified that VAW research entails a particular set of risks and concerns related to how participants are recruited and how violence is measured, compared, and reported [3]. Lack of methodological consistency in addressing these concerns can result in underreporting of violence and may entail risks
to the mental wellbeing of the participants, as well as the researcher [4] and impose threats to internal and external validity of VAW studies [2, 6]. In response to these issues, the World Health Organization (WHO) developed ethical and safety recommendations to guide in conducting future studies concerning VAW [7]. VAW is an important issue in Pakistan although there are no reliable statistics on the overall prevalence or incidence given the lack of reliable national surveys on this topic [2]. However, there have been many preliminary surveys conducted to estimate the rate of abuse among women. These surveys suggest that VAW is highly prevalent in Pakistan, but researchers in the field of VAW studies believe that it may be underreported [8, 9]. This is likely because VAW is considered a private matter, deeply rooted in cultural beliefs and attitudes, particularly in the strong patriarchal ideas that dominate societal norms and behavior [10]. In addition, marriage vows are interpreted as granting the man the right to control his wife’s life [11], thus making women
2 socially, economically, and emotionally dependent on their husbands. Similarly, cultural practices and social norms may lead to the belief that VAW is acceptable, thereby preventing women from disclosing their abuse experiences [2]. In some parts of the country, restrictive cultural norms reduce a woman’s movement and interaction with the outside world unless accompanied by a male family member [12]. Generally, women may not invite outsiders into the home while their male or senior family members are absent [2]. These realities present significant methodological and ethical considerations for researchers who conduct studies focusing on VAW. There is no universally agreed upon definition of VAW, as the term varies within regional and cultural contexts [4]. This review used the definition derived from the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) declaration on the elimination of violence against women which defines VAW as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or private life” [13, p.3]. Intimate partner violence (IPV), which is one of the most common phenomena of VAW within a marital relationship in the Pakistani cultural context, was the focus of this review. The significant growing burden of increased VAW demands the attention of health care practitioners (HCPs), particularly nurses, as they play a significant role in health promotion and illness prevention. The paper will conclude with a summary of the methodological limitations and proposed recommendations for practice, education, and researching VAW.
2. The Review 2.1. Aim. The purpose of this review was to identify and assess the strategies used to conduct VAW studies in Pakistan. The following two broad research questions were addressed. (1) What are the methodological strategies researchers used in Pakistani VAW studies for sample selection, recruitment, data collection, and data analysis? And (2) what ethical challenges and subsequent strategies to overcome these challenges are identified in VAW studies from Pakistan? 2.2. Design. Whittemore and Knafl’s [14] updated integrative review framework guided the analysis. This method is appropriate for systematically and rigorously reviewing and synthesizing the VAW literature. It incorporates a method of analyzing research from diverse empirical and theoretical sources and delineates a systematic framework that enhances the rigor of the integrative review process [14]. The integrative review methodology begins with identifying the problem and its related concepts in order to facilitate data extraction from the primary sources. It then outlines well-defined literature search strategies, including search terms and inclusion and exclusion criteria to assess the relevance of primary sources. Next, data evaluation is employed, whereby the quality of the primary studies is evaluated against the identified gold standard measure. Once the maximum number of eligible primary sources is identified, studies are organized into groups and subgroups for the purpose of data extraction
Advances in Nursing and reduction. The data are then arranged in a format to visualize patterns, relationships, and variation among the concepts. This data reduction step supports the iterative analysis methods of qualitative research. Finally, conclusions are drawn and verified with the intent that the depth and breadth of the relevant literature are captured in a logical chain of evidence (Tables 1 and 2). 2.3. The Literature Search. Electronic searching, ancestral searching, hand searching, and citation tracking were carried out within CINAHL, Medline, PubMed, PsycInfo, Global health, OVID, Web of Science databases. Since the electronic copies from the archives of two journals could not be available, therefore Journal of Pakistan Medical Association and Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences were hand-searched. During the search process several terms were combined to form key terms combination (Table 3). For example, first, there is the category referring to victim such as partner, wife, or women, the second category refers to various synonyms for violence, the third category refers to multiple forms of violence, and finally the fourth category indicates location or placement where the studies were carried out such as Pakistan or different provinces of Pakistan. The combination of all the four categories was used to identify the potentially relevant results from the databases. Empirical quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research carried out during 1999 and 2012 originally published in English and in a scientific journal was selected. Only those studies were selected where the research participants were women from Pakistan. The selected year beginning from 1999 was deliberately chosen based on the WHO protocol and ethical and safety recommendations for research on domestic violence against women guidelines first introduced in the years 1997 and 1999, respectively [7, 15]. A detailed search strategy led 84 studies. After removing the duplicate studies and filter out for inclusion and exclusion criteria, 18 relevant studies were identified. A component of results of two studies published elsewhere narrowed down the search to 16 studies. 2.4. Data Evaluation. All 16 studies were critically appraised prior to being included in any analysis. Quantitative studies were evaluated using two critical appraisal tools: (1) quality assessment tool for quantitative studies (Effective Public Health Practice Project (EPHPP) Guideline), [16]; and (2) guidelines for critiquing quantitative research report [17]. Qualitative studies were graded based upon the appraisal standards of Letts and colleagues [18], whereas mixed methods research (MMR) followed Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool [19]. Five studies failed to adequately meet the selection criteria and were therefore discarded. Eleven studies were included in the analysis; eight were quantitative, two were qualitative, and one was MMR. 2.5. Data Reduction, Representation, and Comparison. During the data reduction stage, data were extracted and represented numerically and textually [14]. To facilitate the iterative comparison and interpretation, data were reduced according to specific “issues, variables, or sample characteristics” [14, p. 550]. The research questions were answered
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3 Table 1: Summary of methodological research strategies among the studies reviewed. (a)
Strategies
Ali et al. [20]
Ali and Bustamante-Gavino [26]
Andersson et al. [21]
Farid et al. [22]
Sample selection: Study setting
Urban
Urban
Urban and rural
Study sample
Married, 25–60 yrs
Married, 15–45 yrs, at least 2 children
Women married or not >14 yrs
Urban Recently deliver, 15–49 yrs, living with partner
Sampling frame Sample size
Multistage randomization 800 women
Purposive, nonrandom
Stratified cluster random
Random
400 women
23430
500
2 low SES communities
5 low SES communities
100 communities
4 tertiary care public hospitals
Midwives/health workers 93.7 (6.3)
CHW∗
CHW∗
Absent
92.5 (7.5)
(3)
Absent
Survey interview
S. interview/FGD∗
Survey interview
Designed based on FGD∗
Designed for survey and FGD∗
WHO-DV∗ module (modified version)
Assured Experienced/extensive
Assured Absent/extensive
Data cleaning, validation, double entered
Assured Experienced/extensive In absence of male and senior women Data cleaning, validation, double entered
Explicit
Explicit
Explicit
Explicit
Explicit
Explicit
Explicit
Explicit
Recruitment: Recruitment site Recruitment strategy Response (refusal) rate (%) Data collection: Data source
Data collection tool
Tool validity Interviewers/training Privacy during interview Data quality control Data analysis: Methods of analysis/limitations Interpretation of finding ∗
Survey interview Multicountry Study on Women’s Health and Life Experiences Questionnaire Assured Experienced/extensive Home, nearby school, NGO facility Reinterviewed 5% randomly selected participants
In absence of husband
Outside visiting hours Implicit
CHW: community health worker, FGD: focus group discussion, WHO: World Health Organization, DV: domestic violence. (b)
Strategies
Fikree et al. [23]
Fikree and Bhatti [8]
Hussain and Khan [28]
Karmaliani et al. [24]
Urban Recently deliver women
Urban Married women living with husband
Urban Pregnant women (20–26 wks gestation)
Sampling frame
Random
Convenience
Sample size
300
150
Urban CKI∗ and women experiencing violence CKI∗ : snowball women: purposive 8 key informants 3 FGD∗ : 23 women in-depth interview: 10 women
Low to middle SES∗ community LHW∗ 96.7%
Sample selection: Study setting Study sample
Random
1324 women
Recruitment: Recruitment site Recruitment strategy Response (refusal) rate (%)
A large tertiary public hospital Absent
Absent
2 middle and lower middle SES∗ communities CKI
(
