Postscript

Postscript

This study is just the beginning of my research career in the field of domestic violence.As some academics point out,psychological violence is a sensitive topic(Hanmer et al.,2000) and research in relation to it is fraught with difficulties (Lee&Stanko,2003;Skinner et al.,2005;Ye,2010).Therefore,there are a lot of barriers on my research path and I will overcome them in order to continue researching with the aim of helping to eliminate such violence.

Nevertheless,my research has attained my research aims:firstly,to investigate the use/experiences of psychological violence between wives and husbands;secondly,to investigate whether psychological violence occurs differently between intellectual and non-intellectual families;and finally,to investigate what forms such as verbal forms,including communication,ridicule,swearing,dirty language,etc.,and nonverbal forms,including facial expression,gesture of threats,non-communication,etc.are used by wives and husbands.Thus the overall aim was to reveal different attitudes,behaviours,emotions,experiences and impact to psychological violence between wives and husbands.

During the process of my exploration,I have discovered that I need to study social theories further because researching domestic violence cannot be separated from researching society (Letherby,2003;Mills,1959),which covers a wide range of aspects such as marriage and family,economy,politics,gender,criminology,psychology,sociology,language,and so on.Only by doing so can I contribute to this field perfectly.

After finishing this research,I have found that there are weaknesses in my research design.Firstly,the weakness may be reflected in my collection of data,which has been discussed in Part II.For example,in order to get the high quality of answers from respondents,I need to design my questionnaire more carefully,e.g.avoiding multiple-choices as noted in Chapter 6.In addition,I need to be more aware when I interview male interviewees in particular,because I should bravely ask questions about private matters with interviewees (see Chapter 7).

Secondly,another weakness is revealed through my reflection on my analysis and discussion.During the process of my discussion,I have found that I need to pay more attention to the close combination and links between the interviews and the survey questionnaire.This is because I could not answer more fully why and how some issues occurred or were different between wives and husbands,and why there was a big gap between the interview and questionnaire data.As elaborated in Part II,the method of interview can help researchers to get more detailed information about 'how' and 'why'.I therefore think that I should have analysed the questionnaire data with SPSS before the interviews in order to ask about the answers developing from the questionnaire data.

Through such aspects,I realised that in my current research I could not examine all data and discuss them.For example,the data concerning the groups of different age,occupations,etc.were not discussed in my book.This would need to be done in my future research.In addition,I will continue my research still focusing on verbal and non-verbal psychological violence and its impacts,which will help in the protection of victims.In a word,I continue to be very interested in this area of exploration.