Reviewer's report
Title:Barriers among Danish women and general practitioners to raising the
issue of intimate partner violence in general practice: a qualitative study
Version:4Date:27 February 2014
Reviewer: Maria Papadakaki
Reviewer's report:
Many thanks to the authors for sending their revised manuscript. The authors
seem to have invested enormous effort on the revisions and have significantly
improved the quality of their manuscript. They have addressed most of the
comments of the first review but there are still some issues that need to be
addressed as follows:
•Major Compulsory Revisions
GENERAL:
•The manuscript needs to be revised by a native speaker as there are many
language problems throughout the manuscript. e.g. page 19 “the GPs
demonstrated lack of knowledge and the society ….and personal autonomy”.
RESULTS:
•The presentation of the results is made both by category of respondent and by
theme. This seems to be problematic as there is much overlap, repetition and low
consistency in the presentation of the results. I suggest the results section to be
guided by the themes identified in the analysis instead of the respondent
category.
•The themes that emerged from the thematic analysis do not seem to capture all
the data generated through the interviews. There is much new information
reported inconsistently even within the discussion section.
•The labels of the themes in many cases are not representative of their content.
In fact, the content of some themes seems too broad without a focus. The theme
“service response after disclosure” focuses on confidentiality and thus is not
representative of its content. I would suggest the authors to re-work their themes.
•Most of the quotes presented in the text are not interpreted correctly and
meaningfully. There are important meanings to be extracted that are missed or
neglected.
•The authors make generalizations despite the small number of respondents,
which limits the external validity. More moderate wording needs to be employed
in the interpretation of the study findings.
DISCUSSION
•The discussion section seems to be too long and many conclusive remarks are
repeated.
•Findings from the three categories of respondents are inconsistently and
interchangeably discussed throughout the discussion section, thus generating
some confusion. A more structured discussion could be introduced with
subheadings.
•There is much information not relevant to the study findings that could be
removed. For example, a big part of the discussion is devoted to murder and the
sentences/penalties, which is not directly relevant to the study findings.
•The authors extract conclusions (both at the results and discussion sections),
which are not supported by the data of this study. For example, it is noted “the
GPs have poor skills in detecting IPV and they have little knowledge of the
consequences of IPV” (page 28). However, the authors did not examine the
respondents’ knowledge and detection skills. In another point it is noted that
“Findings from the study strongly indicate….successful intervention from UK,
Australia, USA or Sweden could possibly work in a Danish setting” (page 28)
•page 21 “Another explanation could be several subconscious issues …… have
achieved “social closure” the paragraph is not well understood.
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Needs some language corrections before being
published
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a statistician.
Declaration of competing interests:
'I declare that I have no competing interests'