Children in Domestic Violence Shelters by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783031954771
Publisher: Springer Nature Switzerland
Published: 2025-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Methods

The analysis in this chapter is based on eight months ethnographic fieldwork at a domestic violence shelter in Denmark and interviews with children living at the shelter. The data collection took place in 2018–2019 as part of a project focusing on everyday life and family relationships among children and mothers at a shelter (see also Henze-Pedersen 2021a, 2021b; Henze-Pedersen and Järvinen 2021). 31 children (0–17 years) were part of the fieldwork—of whom 16 were younger than 6 years of age. The fieldwork also included 26 mothers, whose ages ranged from 25 to 45 years. Half of the mothers were Danish born, while the rest came from other countries in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and South America. Finally, 25 staff members (full-time and part-time) participated in the fieldwork.

Before the fieldwork began, the families were informed about the project through an information leaflet. When the fieldwork started, informed consent was obtained from the children and mothers. However, consent was an ongoing process throughout the fieldwork (Henze-Pedersen 2022; Moore et al. 2018). The ethnographic fieldwork was conducted during both weekdays and weekends. During the fieldwork, I conducted participant observation at the shelter (DeWalt and DeWalt 2002). I participated in the families’ everyday lives, for example by sitting in the kitchen while dinner was being prepared and eaten, watching television with the children in the afternoon or evening, and playing with the children outside at weekends. I took fieldnotes during the fieldwork (Emerson et al. 1995) that present an account of the multiple everyday lives that unfolded side by side at the shelter and record how the families practiced and negotiated everyday life in this shared space.

During the fieldwork, 10 children (aged 6–12 years) were interviewed and 8 of these children were interviewed again 6–12 months later, when most of them had left the shelter. The interviews were semi-structured and employed visual methods. I used visual methods to reduce some of the intensity in the interview situation, and to make it easier for the children to talk about abstract or taken-for-granted phenomena, such as everyday life (Bagnoli 2009; Punch 2002). The first interview explored how the children experienced their everyday lives based on a map of the shelter that made it possible to talk about what they did, when they did it and with whom they did it with. The first interview also explored their relationships while staying at the shelter. This part of the interview was facilitated with a drawing of concentric circles that helped the children talk about closeness and distance in their various relationships (Eldén 2013). The interviews provided insight into the children’s changing experiences of everyday life and social relationships before, during and after their stay at the shelter.

The study followed the ethical guidelines set by the Independent Research Fund Denmark and the Danish universities concerning consent, anonymity and data management.1 In addition to following these ethical guidelines, situated ethics were employed during the fieldwork, acknowledging that ethics have to be adjusted and adapted to changing situations (Bredal et al.

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