Being Trapped in an Abusive Relationship: A Phenomenological Study of Women’s Experiences of Violence in Intimate Relationships

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Title: Being trapped in an abusive relationship; A phenomenological study on women's experiences of violence in intimate relationships

Overall:

• Overall this is an interesting and important study that illuminates the lived experiences of IPV survivors in South Africa. It adds a depth of knowledge, and I commend the authors on undertaking this study. Some areas need attention.

Writing/APA:

• Consider another word instead of “stay long” in IPV relationships – maybe long-term?
• 2 line 53: considering adding additional causes—though the size difference between men and women may result in greater harm, this is but a fraction of the gender imbalance (consider power/control, social factors, etc). “The gender imbalance in domestic violence is partly related to differences in physical strength and size preventing women from equipping themselves should the partner be violent (Kaur and Garg 2008).”
• Pg 2, line 76: Instead of “Whereas,” use “furthermore”
• Avoid anthtropomorphisms throughout. Instead of “Although the literature shows”—say “researchers have found”

Literature Review:

• The literature includes a lot of excellent statistics that contextualize the study—however, it’s missing a review of studies that have been conducted around this topic in SA, SSA, (and can incl globally as relevant). Include additional studies, their methods, findings, gaps. Which gaps would this study fill? In Discussion, you can compare your findings with these. 

Method:

• Methods are well-written and appropriate. However, you're missing a stated research question (should be at end of lit review) which is needed to contextualize the findings.
• Missing examples of interview questions.
• Description of participants needs to be moved from Results to Methods.
• Explain more about the recruitment and procedures process. Why shelters and not general community? How might these participants be different from those not in shelter? (can elaborate in discussion section).
• Also missing bracketing section (author noted they completed bracketing, but bracketing statements need to be included in the methods section, as standard for qual research papers to allow reader to contextualize the researcher in their bias and experience)
• In the data analysis section, author states that lead researcher completed all the initial data analysis, but later states that “all the authors were involved in the analysis and interpretation of data” – clarify roles of all researchers and how they were involved in data analysis. If they were not involved, this needs to be stated as a significant limitation, because phenom qual data needs a team for analysis.

Results:

• Overall, this is presented really well. Concise and clear.
• Start out the results section by summarizing and listing all your categories/themes (table can come later as a reference). 
• Demo table should be in Methods. In the demo table, the categories “No children with partner” and “No own children” are unclear. Write out “number” because it reads as “no”. Also, there may be a better way to state this, since “own” children would incl those with partner. For an international audience, perhaps explain what is meant by Matric, primary, tertiary education.

Discussion:

• Overall good discussion of the results.
• Need to include implications for practice and policy sections—why do these findings matter and what do we do with them?
• Need to include limitation section
• Need to include recommendations for future research
• Be careful of attempting to generalize findings, since it cannot be done with qual data like this. Eg, p. 15, line 691: instead of saying “Our study found that the foremost factor that delayed women from leaving violent relationships was the fact that they did not have anywhere to go.” – say instead: “a recurring theme experienced by # of women (all?) in the study was….”

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Overall very well-written. Some English issues/grammar, but minor. 

Author Response

We appreciate the valuable comments and suggestions that have improved our manuscript. We have implemented all the comments to the best of our abilities. Find attached the author responses.

 

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

"the reasons women stay long" should be "the reason women stay for long periods of time" 

bottom of page 2 "from SSA" this is the first time you use this acronym. Define the acronym and put (SSA) in parantheses for the first time.

"Eleven women aged between 20 to 48 years" on page 5 should read "The eleven women were between the ages of 20 and 48."

Results: "Three women completed tertiary education" tertiary education should be explained. Education systems are different across the world and those from other countries may not understand what this means.

place of residence: was this before they sought shelter or where they are currenlty living? It is not clear from the write up.

there is no limitations section in the paper. All research has limitations and needs to be discussed. After the limitations section a future research section should be added. This type of research also lends itself to policy. What types of policies could be implemented. 

The research design and results are good, but there is much lacking at the end of the paper. A strong paper would include limitations, future research, and policy implications. 

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

There are a few places in which the english could be improved. They are in the prior section.

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for the comments and suggestions. We have implemented all the comments to the best of our abilities. Find attached the authors' responses.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf