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: 3Date:1 August 2013
Reviewer: Bosiljka Djikanovic
Reviewer's report:
First of all, my compliments to authors who succeeded to build considerable
knowledge over such a sensitive issue, but based on the modest number of
individual and groups interviews. As they said, by now this topic was
under-investigated in their country, and it was not known what are the attitudes
and believes of both healthcare professionals and women related to
communication over intimate partner violence in healthcare settings. The content
itself is fine but it should be restructured, and I have several concerns that should
be extensively addressed throughout the manuscript, in order to improve
credibility of qualitative findings and reporting in academic formats in
peer-reviewed journals.
Major Compulsory Revisions
- In general, the manuscript in its current form is over-lengthy and it structure
resembles theses rather than academic article. It has to be shortened for one
fourth, at least.
- Please be more focused in the Introduction and end it with explicit research
questions. The use of term “refuge” needs short clarification. Is it a shelter for
women?
- In the Method, Study, design, second sentence needs to be expanded, it is
unclear now. It is insufficient to say “Elements from grounded theory (…) was
used as an interpretative analytic tool”.
- Throughout the Method, there is no reference related to conducting focus
groups, such as Krueger & Casey (2000), for example, and there was no
observer during the focus group, so I am concerned whether this form of
qualitative research might be called ”focus group interview”, as it was not held
according to the well established standards. Author might consider calling it
“group interview” rather than focus groups interview, since participants’ replying
to each other is also not presented here. In addition, I found it insufficient to
present ”sample of questions” that were asked (Table 2), as a frame, but rather a
few questions should be presented. Please make sure that the principles of rigor
of qualitative research applies here.
- Summary of characteristics of the research participants (Table 1) belong to the
Results section, not Method, as well as results of coding, under the subheading
Coding and analysis.
- Inclusion criteria should be explicitly stated, under the “Description of
recruitment of interviewees” subheading
- Results section currently misses the structure, and it does not follow the order
presented in the Method, which makes it difficult to follow (GP, abused women,
non-abused women).
- Please correct the beginning of the Results section, and avoid elements of
discussion in the Results section, that are extensively presented now.
- Results section, pg. 26, authors mentioned Revised Conflict Tactics Scale as a
frequently used screening tool. I can not agree with this statement; there are
many other instruments that are being used. Please have a look at Rabin et al
(2009), on screening instruments, published in Am J Prev Med, and correct
appropriately.
- In Discussion, and in manuscript as a whole, it is unclear what is the context of
“private practice” (pg. 34) and its specifities. Also, the next paragraph needs
more elaboration, especially the statement “apparently paradoxical choices of the
victims” (pg. 34), and reference related to the police perspective is needed here
as well. Last paragraph (pg. 36) is unclear, what is meant by external
implications, normalization process, and gendered pre-understanding.
- Study limitations, the last paragraph (pg. 37), the first sentence (“Finally
discussing severity of the IPV problem (…)” is not relevant to the content which
was investigated here, so the whole paragraph needs to be rewritten.
- Conclusions are unacceptably long.
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field
Quality of written English: Acceptable
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