Article Analysis

Question 1
According to Mahlstedt and Keeny (1993), sexually abused women are most likely to
disclose their abuse to informal sources of help, especially family and friends, as opposed to
formal sources like the police. Trust is the main reason for resorting to family and friends
rather than the authorities. Trust is especially important when one takes into account the
considerable amount of shame surrounding the issue of sexual abuse (Mahlstedt & Keeny,
1993). Even then, family and friends are not trusted the same; when confiding in someone
about sexual abuse, female victims tend to trust their fellow female family members and
friends more than males. The exception is Black female victims who are more likely to share
their experiences with their brothers. Besides trust, another reason victims of sexual abuse
resort to their social networks is the belief that abuse is a private matter to be resolved
privately.
Question 2
According to Edwards et al. (2012), when forty-four college women’s disclosure or
non-disclosure of dating violence was studied using quantitative methods, it was found that
they disclosed the violence to those closest to them in their social networks, mainly family
and friends. Their stated reasons for disclosure included the need to vent abuse-related stress,
seeking advice on whether or not to end the relationship, and the need to be reassured that
their partners were to blame. On the other hand, qualitative content analyses conducted by the
same authors on the same participants revealed that women’s tendency to downplay or
trivialize abuse was their main reason for not disclosing. Often, they rationalized the incident
away by saying that it was “no big deal” (Edwards et al., 2012).

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Question 3
According to Edwards et al. (2012), when victims disclose their abuse, there are
responses to and outcomes of their disclosures that they found most useful. These included
receiving helpful advice the opportunity to talk or vent about the situation and the associated
stress. It also includes receiving emotional support like comfort, a justification of why the
partner may have behaved the way they did, and the neutral perspective provided by the
confidant. Providing emotional support was rated as the most helpful outcome of all these.
Also, friends, not family, were rated as the most helpful source of help. On the other hand,
the responses and outcomes they found least helpful included ‘bad advice, including advice to
terminate the relationship, the feeling of not being understood, and someone joking about the
victim’s experiences.
Question 4
According to Edwards et al. (2012), some of the limitations of their study included the
small sample size of only forty-four college-attending women, the retrospective nature of the
study, and their inability to interview study participants to provide more in-depth qualitative
information. The small sample size made it difficult to generalize the study findings. Because
of its retrospective nature, the study had a significant risk of recall bias, and its level of
evidence is inferior compared to prospective studies (Mallicoat, 2015). By being unable to
interview study participants in-depth, the researchers missed an opportunity to enrich their
qualitative analyses further. Fortunately, to address these shortcomings, the researchers
corroborated their findings by comparing them to findings from other similar studies.

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References

Edwards, K., Dardis, C., & Gidycz, C. (2012). Women’s disclosure of dating violence: A
mixed methodological study. Feminism & Psychology, 22(4), 507-517.
Mahlstedt, D., & Keeny, L. (1993). Female survivors of dating violence and their social
networks. Feminism & Psychology, 3(3), 319-333.
Mallicoat, S. L. (2015). Women and Crime: A Text/Reader (2 nd ed.). Thousand Oaks: SAGE
Publications, Inc.