Your assignment is to prepare and submit a paper on critical review & appraisal of one published research study.

Your assignment is to prepare and submit a paper on critical review & appraisal of one published research study. Themes in the literature tend to lean toward identifying the consequences and causes of domestic violence (Johnson and Ferraro, 2000). Crime studies tend to demonstrate a bias in favour of women as the primary victims of domestic violence (Straus, 1999). The reality is however, that men are victims of domestic violence (Straus, 1999). In fact, the Home Affairs Committee (2009: 133) of the House of Commons commented that ‘men are the forgotten victims of domestic violence’. It is the reality that men are victims of domestic violence and the fact that the Home Affairs Committee acknowledged the neglect of male victims of domestic violence that prompted my interest in research on this subject.

I selected a peer reviewed article by Dobash and Dobash (2004) because it provides empirical evidence of why much of the focus on domestic violence tends to be biased in favour of women as the primary victims. The research was based on a mixed methods approach involving 95 couples where both partners had reported violence against one another. This research is important to me because it helps me in my future career plans in social and community development by shedding light on the social construction of domestic violence as a problem primarily for women. The article selected is: Dobash, R.P. and Dobash, R. E. (2004). ‘Women’s violence to men in intimate relationships.’ British Journal of Criminology, 44: 324-349.

In selecting the article by Dobash and Dobash (2004) I began by entering key terms in the search engine provided by several databases online. The databases selected were Jstor, Springer, Wiley, Google Scholar, Sage, Karger Open Access, Elsevier, Taylor & Francis Group, and Exlibris. I also conducted a general search of Google.