Producing Stories About Intimate Partner Violence and Abuse: The Coral Project Methodology

Abstract

Chapter 2 focusses on the dominant methodologies for pro- ducing knowledge about intimate partner violence and abuse (IPVA), before offering a discussion and justification of the innovative methodol- ogy adopted for the mixed-methods Coral Project research. We argue that it is necessary to trouble, or queer, both the reproduction of simplis- tic binaries of male/female and victim/perpetrator and the invisibility of LGB and/or T+ people in the mainstream heteronormative, cisnormative IPVA literature. In particular, we critique the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS) and emphasise the importance of capturing the contexts in which violence and ‘abusive’ behaviours are experienced and used. We demon- strate how our Coral Project methodology, which employed both an LGB and/or T+ population survey and follow-up qualitative interviews, sought to overcome some of the limitations of existing approaches. We explain the approach that we took to recruit as diverse a sample as we could, as well as the ethical and safety considerations that this research necessitated. Paving the way for the analysis which follows, we illustrate how the triangulation of quantitative and qualitative data can trouble simplistic readings of quantitative data.