Social work practice research innovation, implementation and implications: A case of ‘Cooperative Grounded Inquiry’ with formerly abused women in Hong Kong

Abstract

There is a notable ethical, epistemological and practical need to recognize formerly abused women's central role in developing domestic violence services and related knowledge. For achieving social work professional accountability, methodological innovations that facilitate participation of different stakeholders in domestic violence services are required. Instead of polarizing domestic violence service providers and users, this article aims at providing deeper thoughts on methodological innovation that can facilitate coparticipation and partnership in domestic violence social work practice research. I propose a rigorous merging of Cooperative Inquiry and Grounded Theory Methodology to produce a Cooperative Grounded Inquiry which can cast light onto the promotion of participation and knowledge making in domestic violence social work services. This methodology was applied in working with formerly abused women in Hong Kong and has generated useful working principles for further application of the methodology.

Doing being observed: Experimenting with collaborative focus group analysis in post-Umbrella Movement Hong Kong

“…From the introductory sessions onwards the initiating researchers had to suspend their pre-existing knowledge of the topic and create space for the participants to articulate their lived experiences and values (Beresford, 2000;Kong, 2016 We found the 'not knowing' position (Anderson, 2005) to play an important role in fostering dialogue and communication. In particular, given that the initiating researchers were publicly identified as 'Yellow Ribbons', temporarily suspending their views on the Umbrella Movement encouraged participants of different political stances to talk freely about their experiences and views even when those views were contrary to those of the researchers.…”

Beyond ‘Safeguarding’ and ‘Empowerment’ in Hong Kong: Towards a Relational Model for Supporting Women Who Have Left their Abusive Partners

“…It allowed us to develop an understanding of the diverse experiences of women in coping with their post-separation challenges. This paper presents only the findings on how women participants' identity work was carried out in this project while details of the methodology and the other findings have been presented elsewhere (Kong 2016;Kong 2018).…”

Talking Politics, Performing Masculinities: Stories of Hong Kong Men Before and After the Umbrella Movement

“…We employed cooperative grounded inquiry (Kong 2016) in our study which merges the principles of cooperative inquiry (Heron 1996) and grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967).…”

“…These categories may become the basis for new theory. Cooperative grounded inquiry (CGI) is an offshoot of this methodology that aims for a more democratic production of knowledge in aid of grounded theory technique of constant comparative analysis (Kong, 2016). Participants are considered as co-researchers in a CGI because they are constantly invited to create concepts (linguistic constructs) to make sense of the In keeping with our cooperative grounded theory methodology, our research evolved over time and in response to issues raised by our participants.…”