Children’s voices in research with children exposed to intimate partner violence: a critical review

Abstract

This article discusses how qualitative research with children exposed to intimate partner violence deals with methodological issues of children’s voices. Violence researchers argue for the need to see children as competent social actors, differentiate between groups of children, attending to adult–child asymmetry in research and acknowledging children’s individual experiences. However, little is said about how children’s voices are produced in their local, cultural and societal contexts. There is also an ignorance of the politics of representation, which may hamper the development of ethically responsible research on children exposed to intimate partner violence.

Keywords:

• Children’s voices
• child abuse
• intimate partner violence
• reflexivity

Acknowledgements

We gratefully thank the two anonymous reviewers, as well as Kjerstin Andersson, Margareta Hydén, Linn Sandberg and our colleagues at the Division of Social Work, Linköping University, for providing invaluable feedback on earlier drafts of this paper.