A Brief Note On Systemic Obstacles And The Criminal...

The article I am critiquing is entitled â€Å"Systemic Obstacles to the Criminal Prosecution of a Battering Partner: A Victim Perspective.† It seeks to explain the criminal justice system related to battered women, from a victim’s point of view. The major issue being investigated in this article is that many women fail to follow through after battery charges are pressed. The major concepts discussed in this article were not well conceptualized. While there was not much that needed to be conceptualized or defined, the researchers failed to explain a term that was used throughout. The researchers commonly used the phrase â€Å"follow thorough,† but nowhere in the article did they specifically define what they meant by that phrase. The research†¦show more content†¦Of the 92, they were able to get in contact with 49 women. These women were between the ages of 18 and 46, and the average age was 29 years old. These women were contacted by telephone, and each completed an interview. The average survey interview lasted about 20 minutes. The participants were asked to answer 3 open-ended questions and were then given the opportunity to share information about their personal experiences of pressing charges as a victim of battery (Bennett et al., 1999). According to Schutt (2015), a question is open ended if the participants answers questions in their own words. These types of questions allow the participants to formulate their own responses, and voice their own opinions. By using this type of question the researchers were able to get personal responses unique to each person. The participants’ responses were recorded word for word, and the women’s responses were compared. I think the design of t he study was useful, but I have a major problem with the way in which the participants were gathered. Frankly, I find it unethical. According to the article, questionnaires were used from a prior study, and those respondents were contacted. It does not say in the article that the researcher had the participants’ permission to use the information gained in that previous study for this study. Without this explicit permission to contact them in the future, the researchers would be violating the beneficence