Reaching Out: Using Social Media to Recruit ‘Invisible Groups’: The Case of South Asian Women in the UK Experiencing Gender-Related Violence

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

This is an important paper and a useful contribution to existing debates on recruitment of hard-to-reach and vulnerable groups. 

It’s unfortunate that the paper is poorly presented, with track changes including in the text making it difficult to read easily. It’s frustrating as a reviewer to be given a paper that hasn’t been properly edited and proofread – it is not fair to ask someone to trawl through your detritus to try to make sense of the points you’re making.

More broadly, there is too much happening here and it’s obscuring the important arguments that you’re making. The key points about recruitment and gatekeepers AND ethics are incredibly valuable and should be given priority. There is quite a lot of superfluous information that can be streamlined, and the focus of the paper needs to be tightened to make it clear what the main contributions are to the existing literature.

The main point is that NGOs and charities often act as gatekeepers – and this can be problematic for several reasons when trying to reach a wide range of women experiencing DV: firstly, some women don’t access these organisations out of fear of being found out or bc of community stigma – and these voices are thus lost. Secondly, that NGOs/charities often don’t have capacity to respond to requests bc they are already stretched (not necessarily bc they are trying to be obstructive), and again voices of women are thus lost. Using social media can provide solutions to these problems BUT more attention needs to be paid to the potential problems with NOT using a gatekeeping organization. You mention safeguarding and lack of support but don’t provide enough detail nor do you link this sufficiently to existing literature. What happens if women disclose they are in danger or that their child/children are in danger? This puts a lot of onus on the researcher to understand safeguarding processes and how to manage disclosures – which isn’t something you talk about in detail but absolutely needs to be considered here. Equally, disclosures can also place an emotional burden on the researcher who no longer can rely on a stakeholder organization to support women in danger or women who are struggling psychologically – how can researchers offer appropriate support? Should they be offering support? And if so, how do they so this while maintaining boundaries? These are both methodological and epistemological questions that need more attention – and I would expect to see these couched within the wider literature on feminist methodologies.

There are some other practical questions that aren’t considered – particularly around researcher safety. What happens if a perpetrator finds the correspondence and contacts the researcher, or worse, targets/attacks the researcher? This is a possibility and it highlight the dangers of not using gatekeeping organisations – who have specific safeguarding measures and risk-assessments in place. Do researchers then have a responsibility to undertake a risk-assessment? Who should organize this? What role does the ethics committee have in setting out these guidelines? These are all questions that really need to be considered here, and which must be properly considered alongside the benefits that this approach to recruiting might provide.

There is also a concern, I think, that researchers who are not equipped to do research with DV victims start to use social media to recruit. Part of the reason NGOs gatekeep is because they get SO MANY requests from UG/PGT students who, frankly, have no business interviewing victims of DV. This question of who should be doing this research should be asked here – as well as some recognition that DV victims can easily become an over-researched population if there is no one there to gatekeep/safeguard and the potential harm that can come to women who are already traumatized is significant.

Finally, you don’t reference much DV literature throughout – providing examples of contemporary methodological approaches to working with victims AND literature on the ethics of victim research is essential here and a real gap in the paper.

Author Response

Please see attached

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

The present study addresses a significant gap in the literature by offering a methodological approach to recruiting what are commonly referred to as 'invisible groups' via social media platforms such as Facebook. Specifically, the study focuses on the challenges of recruiting South Asian women who have experienced gender-related violence and highlights the difficulty in reaching out to these groups. The study acknowledges that some participants may prefer to seek support through social media rather than traditional service providers, which emphasises the importance of considering the safety and well-being of participants, particularly those who may have previously avoided engaging with agencies due to fear, stigma, or other concerns.

Through an exploration of the challenges associated with recruiting South Asian women who have experienced gender-related violence, the study demonstrates how to use Facebook ethically and methodologically, highlighting some of the methods used to overcome the challenges that were presented. For example, the study maintains researcher anonymity while creating a 'professional profile' for the study, which helps to ensure participant safety.

The study's contribution to the field of research on South Asian women is significant as it provides a replicable method that underscores a differing approach to research on this population. It is particularly noteworthy for its use of metrics tables that demonstrate the impact and reach of using social media for recruitment. The study's use of Messenger as a preferred method of communication is also relevant and noteworthy, as ease of communication is often overlooked in the recruitment part of research.

The study's ethical considerations are commendable, particularly in its reflexive positionality, which acknowledges the role of the researcher's identity as a South Asian woman in shaping interactions with participants.  I would ,however ,suggest adding  how this impacted the interactions they may have with the women for example line 639-640 (page 15) where it is mentioned about the researcher-researched relationship. This would enable readers to get a clearer sense of how the role of positionality played out in using this method.

The paper provides a comprehensive review of the relevant literature, and the authors show a good understanding of the key issues and challenges faced in researching South Asian women who have experienced gender-related violence. It is well-structured and concise, and the authors provide a clear and detailed explanation of the methods used. The paper's discussion of the challenges of using social media, such as maintaining high activity through relevant postings and keeping the Facebook page active, adds depth and complexity to the study. Additionally, the authors' acknowledgement that more diverse posts may have increased interest and scholarship in the area of gender-related violence is a valuable contribution to the field.

In conclusion, the present study is a significant contribution to the literature on South Asian women who have experienced gender-related violence. Its methodological approach to recruiting 'invisible groups' via social media platforms such as Facebook is replicable and can inform future research in this area. The paper's ethical considerations, its comprehensive review of the relevant literature, and its use of metrics tables and relevant postings add depth and complexity to the study. Overall, the study is intellectually rigorous, critically reflective, and well-executed.

Author Response

Please see attached

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thanks for submitting your paper. Overall I think the paper is difficult to read. When I read the abstract, I think the paper will provide some insightful discussion on using social media to recruit invisible groups or disadvantaged groups for research. But the article is disappointing. 

I think that the article needs a clearer argument. What are you trying to say, exactly? It seems you are trying to discuss research methodology (and this is for the Special Issue on research and methods). However, it was presented poorly without any soundness and proper structure that we should see in a research article. 

1. State what GRV is in the abstract. 

2. There is no literature review and research questions formed. 

3. The paper is not presented in a scientific way. And the author does not justify the research methods used in this study in a sound way. 

4. Why your paper, or the issues you want to present in your paper, is important. It seems your paper is related to the research method. So how is it different from using snowball sampling?

5. You cannot convince me the paper is important. Indeed, many studies discuss the research methods that should be used on the 'invisible groups' such as drug users, victims of domestic violence or sexual abuse. What does your study add to the existing literature?

6. Extensive editing of the English language and style are required.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review this interesting reflection on the use of Facebook as a means of recruiting research participants to a research project on gender related violence. I think this is a really fascinating paper with the potential to make a very useful contribution to the literature on the qual soc science of social media and social media as method. Please see below for a variety of suggestions of ways I think the paper might be improved upon in some way. However, I think for me the main message would be to tighten the prose, which will make for a quicker, and more engaging read. 

Whilst I'm suggesting an R and R response, and see some of the below issues as being quite important, I think the overall concept and structure of the paper is sound; I wouldn't envisage these amendments taking very long.

Initially I really appreciated the inclusion of some reflection on positionality and race/ethnicity in the methods section, and the clear explanation of which author undertook the research, including the use of A1's initials, was really useful as a way of contextualising the content. However, as I read on, I was wondering more about what A2 and A3's roles were here? Are they just named authors because they are supervisors, or did they contribute more? I think the initial section in the methods part makes it sound as though this was a research project with a team in which A1 was the researcher (and potentially therefore the junior partner), but reading on it becomes evident that this is A1's PhD project (and so presumably A1 also led the design of the project, data analysis etc). So in fact, this left me wondering if the methods section had over-played the role of A2 and A3 as a research team. So I think my feeling would be either to be clearer about what A2 and A3 contributed. Or if this is a classic write-up-from-a-PhD paper, which has been largely authored and researched by A1, then perhaps minimise the use of reference to A1, as I think this rather works to downplay their role to 'researcher' rather than PI of their own doctoral project. 

 I'd like to point you towards the methods paper from a project using Facebook as a space to discuss birth stories. The authors used the platform to conduct the resaerch, but also to recruit to it. 

Dunne, J. H., von Benzon, N., & Whittle, R. (2022). Facebook as a platform for collecting women's birth stories: Supporting emotional connections between researchers and participants. Emotion, Space and Society, 42, 100863.

I think you might find some idea of interest here - particularly the reflection on the authors' failure to include British Asian women in the research, even when they worked with a British Asian researcher. 

Suggested amendments:

1. It would be useful to include a sentence to explain why your focus was GRV in choice-based marriage rather than in all marriages.

2. In terms of the process - the paper states that some lengths were gone to to protect the identity of the main researcher as you were worried that she would be targeted for the research. You then return to this point later, framing it as a benefit for the research. However, Do you think that it might have hindered recruitment if participants weren't clear about the individual they were contacting to take part? Was there any feedback or comment from participants about how they'd felt making first contact with a project where they weren't clear who the individual they were contacting was?

3. Surely there are non-digital methods that could have similar reach (putting an advert in a national newspaper for eg)? Perhaps just not free ones - or not without considerable more effort from the researcher (ie putting postcards up on community noticeboards could reach a lot of people, but you'd need to do the physical writing and putting up). 

4. I think there's a really significant ethical issue there that  'participants who initiated contact via Facebook did so because they had been following the Facebook pages... but hand not engaged with the agencies directly for fear [of?] stigma or of being judged'. Which presumably means that many of these participants were yet to receive any sort of support for the trauma that you were going to research? I think it's important to reflect on this - what did this mean for them? For the researcher? Did their participation then feed into them being able to reach out for support? If this was still unresolved trauma, how did you avoid the research causing more damage as they relived their experiences? How did you know they were ready to help other women if they hadn't yet had the opportunity to process their own experience? 

5. I think it would be helpful to the reader if sub-headings were more descriptive of the content rather than just 'benefits' and 'challenges' etc'. 

6. Overall, I found the writing style rather 'wordy' and found that we came back to ideas again a few times. Whilst I think the content is interesting and useful, I do think that the paper could be tightened up quite considerably, and the key points could be communicated more concisely - which would have the benefit of making the key points clearer and therefore increase the utility and likely impact of the paper. 

7. For more meaning/impact - The paper is framed as of being of a time before COVID and before more widespread use of social media - with some reflections on how things might be better now. I think that this framing is rather too explicit, in that in sounds as though you are already archiving this approach as 'out of date' before the paper is published. Rather, I'd look at trying to reframe the discussion as 'we did this before it was cool, these are the lessons we learned, we now have the benefit of hindsight which we'd like to share with those of you starting out on this sort of research now'. 

The following are typos that I noticed or sentences where the grammar/syntax weren't right. However, I stopped picking these up after a bit - there seemed to be a lot throughout. A thorough proof reading of the paper is definitely needed. 

ii. p2 l.58 typo 'the before'

iii. p3 l.131 'It is a concept'... I can't make sense of this sentence ['or went beyond']. 

iv. p3. l. 134 'attention to the disproportionality for some' - I don't think the meaning is clear here either. 

v. The final sentences are also not very clear in this paragraph. The use of 'one such violation' in the final sentence makes it sound like 'insecure immigration status' in the previous sentence is a violation of family honour?

vi. l.142 'guizzo et al.' capitalized?

vi.. l148 'the pervasiveness of honour' - I'm not sure this clause makes sense on its own - I think you need more explanation.

vii. p4. l154: 'with severed connections to their culture and famiiles reflecting the sensitive nature of the research area' - not sure that 'reflecting' is the right word here? 

viii. P4 l168 'In all 76 agencies'.... Whilst this makes grammatical sense I had to read the sentence a few times to understand it - 'In total' might be clearer?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for submitting the paper again after nearly half a year. I have read your revised paper, but I still find that there are still big problems.

First of all, you disclosed that you are a PhD student in the UK (you forgot to delete the school name); I think you should understand the rules and regulations of conducting research in the UK. Your modified manuscript actually confuses me. You should get approval from the university when designing a study (or before conducting the study), and if you want to contact the LGBT/underage/vulnerable group, you need to conduct a sexual offender check. Why didn't you apply to the school in the first place?

You stated in your article that this is research, so I told you in the first review that the article lacks the steps that a study should have. After the first review, you said in the reply letter that this is not a research study, but you still stated that it is a study in the article, so what is this article?

The data for the article was collected in 2016, which I am shocked and think is too old.

The article remains unfocused and still has a ton of language issues. You need a real academic editor for language revision. If you are a doctoral student, please ask your supervisor for help.