Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches in Measuring Violence against Women in Family Context

Author

MA PhD Student in Sociology, University of Esfahan

Abstract

In the past decades, the social science traditional conceptualization and quantitative research and its dominant hegemony especially in the area of family violence have been heavily criticized by feminist researchers. Nonetheless much effort has been already made to integrate and combine qualitative and quantitative with their defenders in recent decades. This approach emerged as a third methodological paradigm and distinct research type in the 1990s.
The article serves two purposes. First, introducing two main feminist (with qualitative perspective) and family violence approach (with quantitative perspective) in the study of violence against women, examining its weaknesses and strengthens. Secondly it examines some of researches in this case, emphasizing necessity of using mixed approaches in the study of violence against women in the family context in order to achieve an enhanced understanding of life and experiences of woman in particular and that of other studies in this field in generally.

Keywords