Qualitative data is now increasingly used within public health research, and domestic violence widely is recognized as a serious public health problem. India is one of the most socio-economically diverse nations in the world, where language, culture and customs differ from place to place within the country. In order to carry out research on domestic violence in a multi-centre cross-cultural environment, it is imperative to pay attention to methodological issues. This paper aims to understand how domestic violence is addressed in research and identifies lessons from the methodological gaps in understanding health research. These gaps are analyzed at four levels; conceptualization, setting, ethics and cross-cultural adaptation of research instruments. The research was a multicentre study covering 18 states of India. A wide range of methods were used to narrow the methodological gaps. Despite the inherent difficulties in defining domestic violence in a cross cultural set up, the paper reflects the cumulative efforts of investigators to recognize and systematically deal with the methodological gap in addressing multi-centre research.

中文翻译：

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公共卫生的定性研究

定性数据现在越来越多地用于公共卫生研究，家庭暴力被广泛认为是一个严重的公共卫生问题。印度是世界上社会经济最多样化的国家之一，该国的语言、文化和习俗因地而异。为了在多中心的跨文化环境中开展家庭暴力研究，必须关注方法论问题。本文旨在了解研究中如何解决家庭暴力问题，并从理解健康研究的方法论差距中找出经验教训。这些差距从四个层面进行分析；研究工具的概念化、设置、伦理和跨文化适应。该研究是一项涵盖印度 18 个邦的多中心研究。使用了广泛的方法来缩小方法上的差距。尽管在跨文化环境中定义家庭暴力存在固有的困难，但该论文反映了调查人员在处理多中心研究时识别和系统处理方法差距的累积努力。