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Abstract

Background

Intimate partner violence (IPV) presents distinct methodological and ethical challenges which demand approaches that can hold complexity while remaining accountable to survivors’ safety and agency.

Aim

This paper aims to justify and advance a blended approach that responds to the unique methodological, ethical, and relational demands of IPV research.

Methods

Drawing on a narrative inquiry into women’s resistance to IPV, conducted within an intersectional and trauma- and violence-informed analytical frame, this paper traces a reflexive methodological process through which four core commitments were generated. These include being power conscious, considering contextual and temporal awareness, engaging in intersectional analysis, and cultivating reflexivity and positionality, and illustrates their application.

Results

This reflexive process yielded four practice-derived methodological commitments that demonstrate how integrating narrative inquiry’s attention to lived experience over time and place with intersectionality’s analysis of intersecting structures of oppression can guide recruitment, interviewing, analysis, and representation in ways that address safety, coercive control, and structural constraints while supporting layered, survivor-led narratives. The vignette and practice examples show how enacting these commitments can disrupt traditional power hierarchies, enhance contextual and temporal sensitivity, and operationalize intersectional analysis in IPV research.

Implications

These practice-derived commitments offer IPV researchers a concrete, practice-oriented methodological roadmap for designing power-conscious, trauma- and violence-informed studies that better align with survivors’ realities, strengthen ethical rigor, and inform survivor-centered interventions and policies. More broadly, they contribute to qualitative methodology by demonstrating how a narrative inquiry–intersectional blend can be mobilized to address complex, high-risk research contexts.

Keywords

intimate partner violence narrative inquiry intersectionality women’s empowerment

Despite ongoing and renewed global efforts to address violence against women, prevalence rates have remained largely unchanged. Worldwide, approximately one in three women will experience physical or sexual violence after the age of 15 (United Nations Population Fund [UNPF], 2021). This figure may, however, underestimate the true scope of the issue, given the silence, stigma, and secrecy that often surround women’s experiences of violence. In Canada, the statistics mirror these global patterns. Police-reported data show that of the 107,810 people aged 15 and over who experienced intimate partner violence (IPV), 79% were women (Statistics Canada, 2021). The national rate of IPV stands at 309 per 100,000 people annually, yet Saskatchewan consistently reports the highest rates among all provinces—more than double the national average, at 714 per 100,000 (Statistics Canada, 2025).

Beyond its prevalence, IPV presents distinctive methodological and ethical challenges for researchers. Its study requires thoughtful attention to issues of safety, coercive control, contested definitions, and the structural power dynamics that shape both experience and evidence (Bender, 2017; Hardesty & Ogolsky, 2020; Mannell & Guta, 2018). Moreover, these ethical risks are acute, where participants may be surveilled by perpetrators, retraumatized during the research process, or left without safe avenues for support. Researchers must navigate the dual imperatives of generating meaningful knowledge and safeguarding participants’ well-being, particularly in contexts where available services are limited or distrusted (Bender, 2017; Hardesty & Ogolsky, 2020; Mannell & Guta, 2018; Njie-Carr et al., 2021).

This article situates IPV as methodologically unique in which questions of power, ethics, and evidence are inseparable from design choices and argues that grappling with these challenges can reshape how research is conceptualized and conducted in IPV (Bender, 2017; Hardesty & Ogolsky, 2020; Wuest et al., 2015). Together these conceptual, ethical, and practical challenges signal the need for methodologies that can both hold the complexity of IPV and remain accountable to survivors’ safety and agency. In this paper, a blended narrative inquiry (NI) and intersectional approach is proposed as one such response. This approach builds on NI’s attention to lived experience over time and place and intersectionality’s focus on intersecting structures of power, to address the distinctive methodological demands of IPV research.

Blending Narrative Inquiry and Intersectionality: Theoretical Foundations

NI has emerged as a powerful methodology for exploring lived experience over time, place, and context (Clandinin, 2019; Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) offering a distinctive way to inquire into complex social issues such as IPV. Rooted in the understanding that people are inherent storytellers, NI centers the co-construction of meaning between survivors and researchers in relation to broader social, cultural, and institutional narratives. NI is a qualitative methodology that understands experience as storied, emphasizing how people make meaning of their lives over time, in particular places (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000), and through relationships. In IPV work, this involves relational and often longitudinal engagement that attends to the ebb and flow of violence, resistance, and everyday life beyond the abuse. Similarly, intersectionality, originating in Black feminist scholarship and critical race theory, offers an analytic framework for examining how intersecting structures of racism, patriarchy, heteronormativity, ableism, and class inequity shape both exposure to IPV and possibilities for safety, resistance, and care (Crenshaw, 1991, 2013). For example, while women generally face a higher risk of IPV, experiences are not solely determined by biological sex. Instead, a woman’s vulnerability to, and experience of, IPV are shaped by the complex interactions of various aspects of her identity (i.e., intersectionality), including her social background, economic status, cultural context, and political environment. In a comment reminiscent of intersectionality, Clandinin (2006) reminds us that personal experiences are not isolated, but are profoundly shaped by the broader social, cultural, and institutional narratives that surround an individual throughout their life. This perspective emphasizes the interconnectedness between personal stories and the larger societal contexts in which they unfold.

NI and intersectionality share a commitment to understanding lives in context but contribute different, complementary strengths to IPV research. NI offers a way of generating rich, situated narratives, while intersectionality provides a critical lens for analyzing how those narratives are produced within, and constrained by, intersecting structures within the IPV landscape such as immigration regimes, child welfare policies, disability access, and poverty (McCall, 2005; McCauley et al., 2019). This NI-intersectional lens aligns with recent calls within health and social sciences research for more critical and emancipatory research methodologies (Butcher, 2022; De Sousa & Varcoe, 2022; Velasco & Reed, 2023) and as many researchers grapple with issues of health equity, social justice, and cultural competence, the combination of NI and intersectionality offers a way to conduct research that is both rigorous and socially relevant.

Although NI has been widely applied in health and social research, there remains, at the time of writing, a dearth of narrative inquiries conducted specifically within IPV landscapes, leaving important methodological and ethical questions underexplored. This gap is particularly significant because NI in IPV contexts must attend not only to survivors’ meaning-making over time, but also to safety, coercive control, and the constraints that shape what can be spoken, to whom, and when (Olmos-Vega et al., 2022; Tutty et al., 2021). There is a delicate balance between the ‘living alongside’ relationships that NI invites and the overriding priority of participant safety within IPV research; a tension that underscores the need for a power-conscious, trauma- and violence-informed NI approach. This manuscript responds to that specific methodological gap by providing guidance on the intentional blending of IPV-specific methodological and ethical challenges (Bender, 2017; Tolmie et al., 2024).

Drawing on a narrative inquiry into women’s resistance to IPV (Mackey, 2025), the paper advances a blended NI–intersectional lens and outlines concrete methodological commitments for designing, conducting, and translating power-conscious, trauma- and violence-informed IPV research. In keeping with the methodological commitments, a hybridized narrative vignette will be presented, grounded in empirical data from the doctoral research and interwoven with insights drawn from the broader evidence base to illustrate the ideal scenario. A vignette is described as a brief, evocative account capturing a key moment or interaction from the research (Agostini et al., 2024). This vignette serves to illustrate how the blended NI–intersectional approach operates in practice, grounding abstract principles in the textured realities of participant experience and researcher–participant relationship. Rather than presenting a complete story, the vignette offers a focused, descriptive glimpse that brings to life the complexities and ethical nuances discussed in the paper.

Core Methodological Commitments

Research on IPV presents profound methodological and ethical complexities that distinguish it from other areas of social science and health research. The sensitive nature of violence disclosure, heightened safety, and confidentiality needs (Sabri et al., 2022), risks of re-traumatization (Ratajczak & Clevenger, 2025), and dynamics of coercive control (Tolmie et al., 2024) create unique challenges for researchers working in this field. Blending NI with intersectionality requires careful attention to these realities by making safety, trauma-informed practice, and survivor autonomy central to every stage of research design, as well as within the research relationship. The commitments outlined below were shaped by working within this IPV context and are intentionally articulated as responses to, and a roadmap for, the distinctive methodological and ethical demands of conducting rigorous, ethical, and transformative IPV research that can inform evidence-based interventions and policy responses.

Ethical Approval

This study received approval from the University of Saskatchewan Research Ethics Board (#4055). In keeping with the high-risk nature of IPV research, all procedures were designed to prioritize participants’ safety, confidentiality, and autonomy, including tailored safety planning, discreet recruitment through multiple community partners, and the use of pseudonyms and composite details in all knowledge translation products. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants, with repeated opportunities to revisit consent and to pause or withdraw from the study at any time.

Being Power Conscious

The power dynamics inherent in IPV are multifaceted and deeply rooted in societal structures. As such, being power conscious is a crucial methodological commitment in IPV research and involves more than a general awareness that power exists. Researchers must deliberately examine how power operates within survivors’ stories, in the researcher–participant relationship, and across every stage of the research process. From an intersectional perspective, this involves examining how intersecting structures such as race, class, gender, sexuality, immigration status, and disability shape exposure to IPV, access to resources and justice, as well as the constraints and possibilities to resist violence (Bagwell-Gray et al., 2021; Baird et al., 2021; Barrios et al., 2021; Diab & Al-Azzeh, 2024). From a NI standpoint, power consciousness entails noticing not only what is told, but what cannot yet be said, how stories shift over time, and how institutional, cultural, and relational narratives contour the stories that are voiced (Wang & Geale, 2015). For example, a power-conscious, intersectional lens draws attention to how cisgender women, transgender and non-binary people, as well as people with disabilities face heightened risks of IPV (Aversa, 2022; Cotter & Savage, 2019; Heidinger, 2021; Savage, 2021; Statistics Canada, 2021), but narratives often uncover the remarkable resilience and resourcefulness these populations have in the face of adversity.

Being power conscious invites sustained attention to how power circulates through decisions in the research process. Researchers must ask, at each step, who is invited or able to participate, what can safely be asked and answered in interviews, how stories are interpreted and represented, and whose interests are served or sidelined when findings are shared. Staying true to the idea of power consciousness, therefore, means co-developing aspects of the study with both survivors and community partners. NI’s commitment to the co-construction of meaning aligns with intersectional concerns about whose knowledge is legitimated and how (Clark & Saleh, 2019). Codeveloping aspects of the study with survivors and community partners helps prevent participation from becoming tokenistic and guards against reproducing the very hierarchies the research critiques. Examples include refining interview questions and shaping knowledge dissemination priorities in partnership with participants (Rix et al., 2022), providing opportunities for participants to review and provide feedback on emerging research findings (Slettebø, 2021), and considering how the researchers’ own identities and positionality (Gonzales, 2024) might influence the research process while actively working to address any biases. A power conscious stance therefore asks, continuously, whose voices are amplified, who bears the greatest risks or burdens as the project unfolds, and how the research might be experienced by those who are already over scrutinized or under protected.

Challenges in IPV research are compounded by difficulties in recruitment due to gatekeeping, surveillance, and fear of retaliation which are everyday realities for survivors (Barnes, 2024; Miller et al., 2022). Recruitment and sampling strategies, for instance, must specifically address and navigate the influential role that formal services (i.e. shelters, clinics, or social services) play in permitting or limiting access to potential participants, since these institutions often control who is reached and when (Gřundělová et al., 2024; Miller et al., 2022). One way to do this is to work with multiple, differently positioned partners so that no single stakeholder controls access to the study or feels responsible for selecting which survivors participate (Miller et al., 2022). At the same time, these strategies must be sensitive to survivors’ fears of being identified or exposed, ensuring that participation does not compromise their safety or privacy and that they do not risk harm simply by being visible as research participants (Bender, 2017; Tolmie et al., 2024). Flexible and discreet participation options can also reduce the risk that involvement in the research is noticed or questioned in small communities or closely monitored households. For example, researchers might conduct interviews immediately after routine clinic visits or use remote encounters that resemble ordinary telehealth contact, so participation is less visible.

Power dynamics are central to the research relationship, particularly when working with survivors of IPV. An NI–intersectional lens requires critical attention to how these dynamics manifest and how they can be actively realigned to prioritize participant safety and agency (Lewis et al., 2024; Wathen & Mantler, 2022). A key responsibility is involving participants directly in the interpretation and representation of their narratives, which is a core principle of narrative inquiry (Connelly & Clandinin, 2012). Member-checking (Birt et al., 2016) and collaborative analysis sessions allow participants to review, respond to, and co-construct meaning from the data, actively disrupting traditional hierarchies in research. These methodological commitments are further operationalized through trauma-informed strategies that honor the agency and complexity of survivors’ intersecting identities. For example, trauma-informed interviewing practices, such as offering clear emotional pacing, signaling that participants can pause, change topics, or stop at any time, and routinely providing grounding breaks, ensure that participants retain control over their participation and minimize the risk of re-traumatization (Nolan, 2025; Wathen & Mantler, 2022). Such approaches not only respect participant autonomy but also challenge research practices that may inadvertently reinforce existing power structures, fostering a more equitable and ethical research environment.

Attending to power within the research relationship also involves offering choices in how participants tell their stories; whether through spoken narrative, drawing timelines, mapping, or writing, so survivors can retain control over how closely they engage with specific traumatic scenes and/or memories (Nolan, 2025). Planning for brief post-interview follow-up contact, when safe, at 24–48 hours can help monitor ongoing distress. It also gives researchers an opportunity to re-provide information about supports, rather than assuming distress ends when the interview ends. These strategies can be combined with screening for safety before contact (Sabri et al., 2022), arranging private and secure interview locations (Njie-Carr et al., 2021), and having clear referral pathways in place (Akbari et al., 2021), even when local, culturally safe services are scarce. By adopting these practices, researchers can conduct more ethical, inclusive, and impactful IPV research that acknowledges and addresses the complex power dynamics inherent in both the experiences of IPV and the research process itself.

Grounded in NI and intersectionality, this work calls for deliberate attention to how language frames survivors’ experiences. Rather than individualizing violence or suggesting a single, universal profile of IPV, researchers are pushed to locate narratives within histories and structures such as colonization, racism, poverty, and heterosexism. For example, explicitly situating the high rates of IPV among Aboriginal women in Canada in relation to colonization, intergenerational trauma, and service gaps. This acknowledgement of language helps to frame IPV within a broader context of systemic and structural oppression rather than treating it as an isolated issue. This framing aligns with critical participatory action research methods and power conscious research practices (Ghanbarpour et al., 2018; Lorenzetti & Walsh, 2022). Power consciousness is not an add-on value but the thread that links NI’s relational, temporal attention to story with intersectionality’s analysis of systems, producing IPV research that is methodologically rigorous, ethically attuned, and explicitly oriented toward justice.

A key aspect of being power conscious is honoring the complexity of human experiences, especially in the context of IPV. This commitment recognizes that experiences within IPV are intricate and multifaceted and shaped by various intersecting identities and systems of oppression (Parrott et al., 2024; Sharpless et al., 2024). For example, a racialized woman who is 2SLGBTQ+, may weigh loss of community and fear of being outed to family, alongside risk of physical harm when considering leaving an abusive partner. This means her choices are constrained in ways that cannot be understood through gender alone. Recognizing such complexity requires researchers to co-design relational interview protocols that allow layered narratives to emerge, rather than funneling survivors into pre-set categories of staying or leaving.

Intersectionality often uses abstract terms that can feel distant from survivors’ own words. Relational interviewing, therefore, requires transforming these concepts into clear, accessible questions that facilitate space for intersectional stories to emerge (Wiesner, 2021; Windsong, 2018). Rather than asking, How do you think being a woman/man/non-binary person has shaped what you went through in this relationship?, an interviewer might say, Can you tell me about a time when who you are made a difference to what was happening in the relationship? and then follow up with simple, concrete prompts such as: Did your sexual orientation or gender identity affect how people responded when you looked for help? Interviewers can start with broad invitations to tell a story, then use simple follow-up questions to gently explore different parts of identity and context. Researchers might also invite participants to name the aspects of identity that feel important to participants and then mirror that language, rather than imposing fixed categories. These kinds of questions make space for survivors to describe, for example, how racism in policing shaped their willingness to call the police, how homophobia or transphobia influenced whether they could turn to family or faith communities, or how poverty and lack of transportation in rural and northern communities limited access to shelters or legal help.

Recognizing that identities and oppressions are intertwined and mutually constitutive is crucial. A person’s experience of IPV, for instance, cannot be separated from their experiences of racism, classism, or other forms of oppression, and that these forces interact to shape both exposure to violence and possibilities for resistance. Researchers must be prepared to explore how these different aspects of identity interact and influence each other in the context of that violence. For instance, techniques like identity mapping (Jaffe-Walter & Khawaja, 2022; Moorhead & Jimenez, 2021) allow participants to visually represent their various identities and how they intersect which can help survivors articulate, for example, how being an Indigenous woman, a mother, and a community member in a small northern town simultaneously shapes exposure to violence, supports, and stigma. Conducting multiple interviews over time can also help capture how different aspects of identity become salient in various contexts or life stages (De Ruiter & Gmelin, 2021). For example, how disability or chronic illness becomes more central when navigating inaccessible services, or how class and employment status shift in importance during separation and rebuilding. Embracing complexity requires steering clear of oversimplifications and resisting the urge to impose artificial narratives on participants’ experiences and perspectives. Researchers must be comfortable with ambiguity and apparent contradictions, recognizing that these are often inherent in complex human experiences (Macqueen & Patterson, 2021). It requires a willingness to engage with messy, non-linear narratives and to represent these faithfully in research findings, rather than tidying stories in ways that erase structural violence.

While these techniques to engage with IPV research offer numerous benefits, it can be challenging for researchers to implement due to the level of control historically associated with research (Ślęzak, 2023). Researchers must strive to relinquish some decision-making power, adapt their mindsets, and find a balance between providing guidance and allowing for genuine co-creation. Embracing this collaborative methodology can lead to richer, more nuanced research outcomes that better reflect the lived experiences and insights of participants. This paradigm shift fosters a more equitable and inclusive research environment, challenging researchers to rethink traditional power structures and embrace a more participatory approach to knowledge creation (Strumińska-Kutra & Scholl, 2022). By prioritizing participant agency, IPV researchers can contribute to the empowerment and healing of survivors, avoiding the potential for research to replicate dynamics of control and disempowerment that survivors may have experienced in abusive relationships. By centering participants’ voice and agency, researchers not only enhance the quality and depth of their findings but also contribute to a more equitable and empowering research process.

Considering Contextual and Temporal Awareness

Attending to the nuances of context is a foundational methodological commitment in both NI and intersectionality, particularly within IPV research where stories unfold across complex personal and structural terrains. Contextual awareness centers on the understanding that each individual narrative is deeply situated within broader social, cultural, and historical forces (Clandinin & Caine, 2013). In NI, this is often articulated through the three-dimensional NI space which centres the ways people’s stories are shaped by who they are with, when events occur, and where they are located (Clandinin & Caine, 2013). For example, a survivor may narrate the ‘same’ violent experience differently when interviewed in a shelter group room surrounded by other women than in a cramped apartment she still shares with her partner, because the relational, temporal, and spatial conditions of telling are different. These forces significantly shape experiences of IPV, as well as the ways intersectional identities are experienced and interpreted by researchers. Within an NI–intersectional frame, these forces are not treated as neutral backgrounds but as shaped by power, privilege, and oppression, which influence whose stories can be safely shared, taken seriously, and supported in particular times and places. Researchers are therefore required to move beyond surface-level accounts of participants’ immediate circumstances, rigorously examining the historical, cultural, and societal factors that inform how IPV is perceived, understood, and lived. This means staying with the tension between the deeply personal and the overtly structural in survivors’ stories, and tracing how individual accounts of harm and resistance are entangled with broader regimes of inequality. For example, a woman’s narrative of ‘choosing to stay’ is considered alongside the context of local housing shortages, welfare policies, and racist policing that make leaving materially and legally dangerous.

Such contextual engagement often demands exploring layers of history to uncover the impact of events such as colonization (Livingston, 2024) or migration (Rana & Boyd‐MacMillan, 2024) on current realities within communities. Researchers must examine cultural narratives, such as those surrounding gender, family, and violence, that shape personal meaning-making and broader collective perspectives on IPV. Additionally, institutional structures, policies, and prevailing social norms profoundly influence both the risk and response to IPV (Meyer et al., 2024). Thus, a nuanced analysis recognizes how these contextual dynamics intersect with factors of race, class, gender, ability, and sexuality. For example, a Black woman’s experience of IPV may be shaped not only by gender but also by systemic racism and the specific cultural contexts of her community. An NI–intersectional approach centers these intersections by asking how particular narrative threads (for example, about motherhood, citizenship, disability, or faith) are taken up, constrained, or reworked across time and setting. Pursuing such an intersectional lens moves understanding beyond singular explanations toward an appreciation of the complexity between personal injustice and wider social landscapes.

Implementing contextual awareness in practice means performing conscientious background research on the histories and cultures relevant to participants and their communities. This can entail co-creating interview protocols that directly prompt reflection on family, community traditions, or cultural beliefs, and interpreting narratives not as isolated accounts, but as deeply interrelated with prevailing narratives and structural realities. Collaborative work with cultural consultants or community members can further reinforce contextual accuracy (Ravi et al., 2023). Reflexivity also becomes key here as researchers must continually examine their own cultural positions and preconceptions, actively challenging oversimplification and steering clear of stereotypes. Within a narrative frame, this includes attending to how researchers’ own stories, disciplinary commitments, and institutional locations shape what can be asked, what is heard, and how survivors’ accounts are ultimately represented. Through such intentional self-awareness, the risk of flattening diverse experiences is minimized. In IPV research specifically, this kind of reflexive contextualization is crucial to resisting pathologizing or decontextualizing survivors’ lives and instead situating their narratives within multi-layered social worlds. Rather than interpreting a survivor’s account of going back to their partner negatively, a reflexive, contextually grounded analysis considers this decision in context of fears of losing custody, lack of safe housing in her rural community, racialized experiences with police, and commitments to keeping children connected to extended family.

Crucial to this contextual commitment is the additional dimension of temporality. Experiences of IPV and intersectional identities are not static but are always in flux, evolving as personal circumstances change, societies shift, and individuals grow. Rooted in NI, temporal awareness involves recognizing the ongoing flow between past, present, and future, and embracing the dynamic evolution of stories (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). Events, relationships, and places are all seen as temporally situated, with prior experiences shaping current understandings and future possibilities. This perception challenges researchers to move beyond fixed, snapshot views, instead honoring the ways people and their narratives transition over time. Bringing an intersectional lens to temporality foregrounds how shifts in policy, economic conditions, migration regimes, and community norms reconfigure which identity positions become most salient, risky, or resourced at different moments in survivors’ lives. For example, a refugee woman’s story of violence may center on war-related trauma when she first seeks asylum, but later narratives may foreground immigration status and work precarity as key threats intertwined with her partner’s control.

Valuing this temporal dimension, researchers are encouraged to design studies that capture change and complexity throughout survivors’ journeys with IPV. This might mean adopting longitudinal methods or inviting participants to reflect on the various stages of their lives and how core aspects of their identities have changed (Vogl & Zartler, 2021). Questions about key turning points, moments of survival or transformation, and ongoing shifts in identity all serve to reveal this non-linear narrative flow. Temporal awareness demands recognizing that the salience of specific identity facets may shift. For instance, a survivor’s racial identity could take on new meaning when navigating support services, or class consciousness might grow when seeking independence post-abuse. An NI–intersectional lens attends to how these shifts show up narratively, and which stories are told as before/after, which are framed as ongoing, and how survivors reposition themselves in relation to systems such as child welfare, welfare benefits, immigration, or criminal justice over time. A participant may narrate a before court/after court storyline in which she shifts from seeing herself as a victim needing rescue to a 2SLGBTQ+ mother fighting a system that threatens to remove her children. Analytical practices such as timeline interviews and close reading for moments of transition can help illuminate these evolving patterns.

Finally, the timing and context of the research itself can shape the stories that are shared. The ways survivors articulate their narrative shortly after leaving an abusive relationship may differ greatly from accounts provided years later, once some healing or adaptation has occurred. Recognizing this, researchers are called to embrace a more dynamic understanding that resists simplistic or static interpretations (Enosh et al., 2013; Rajah & Osborn, 2022). Healing from IPV is often marked by progress and setbacks; so too must research approaches appreciate these shifting realities. For NI–intersectional work, this includes treating any given research encounter as one moment in an unfolding story rather than as a definitive account and explicitly considering how intersecting structures at the time of data collection contour what can be voiced and what remains unsaid.

Engaging in Intersectional Analysis

Imagine a tapestry, each thread representing a different aspect of an individual’s identity, such as, race, gender, class, sexuality, and more. As these threads intertwine, they create a unique pattern, much like the complex lived experiences of IPV survivors. NI and intersectional analysis allow us to trace these threads, following their intricate paths as they weave through the fabric of a person’s life. From an NI–intersectional perspective, this tracing is not only about listing identities but about asking how particular stories of IPV take shape at the intersection of these identities and broader structures. For example, a queer migrant woman’s story of seeking help is co-constructed through her sexuality, immigration status, language, and encounters with service systems. By centering the stories and lived experiences of survivors, NI allows researchers to capture the nuanced ways that multiple identities and systems of oppression intersect to shape individuals’ experiences of IPV. In this way, NI–intersectional work treats survivors’ narratives as situated, relational accounts that illuminate how violence, help-seeking, and resistance unfold differently depending on where people are located in social hierarchies and institutional landscapes.

At the heart of this approach lies a commitment to examining power structures. This examination involves exploring the complex interactions between various systems of oppression such as racism, sexism, and classism, and how they compound each other (Crenshaw, 1991) within the narratives of IPV survivors. Foregrounding an NI–intersectional lens means asking how these systems appear inside the stories themselves; for example, when a survivor’s account of not calling the police is shaped by earlier experiences of racial profiling or fear of child apprehension, rather than by individual failure to seek help. However, this analysis should not be conducted in isolation but rather within the broader societal, cultural, and historical contexts that shape these intersectional experiences (Johnson & Thacker Darrow, 2023). NI directs attention to how survivors locate their own stories within the intersections of community histories, local norms, and shifting policies, revealing how they understand their experiences of IPV as part of a larger social narrative. The process involves a delicate balance between identifying common themes across narratives and recognizing unique or divergent experiences that challenge preconceived notions and discourses.

To implement intersectional analysis effectively, researchers must adopt a multifaceted approach. This begins with the development of sophisticated coding schemes that transcend single identity categories to capture the nuances of multiple identities. Such schemes are anchored within the NI-intersectional lens as whole stories rather than detached variables, allowing researchers to see how particular patterns of social location, relationship histories, and institutional encounters shape the narrative arc of IPV experiences. Researchers might also engage in team-based analysis to bring diverse perspectives to the data. For example, Parmenter et al. (2024) note that their team engaged in many discussions regarding author positionality throughout the data collection and analysis and were specifically attentive to how these may have influenced knowledge production. Visual representations, such as concept maps, can be invaluable in illustrating intersectional themes, while constant comparative analysis (Brinkman & Donohue, 2020; Kagan & Nakatudde, 2024) helps refine and develop intersectional concepts over time. Additionally, it can be helpful to develop and utilize intersectional coding schemes (Bowleg, 2008; El Samaty, 2020) which are crucial for analyzing data through an intersectional lens. These schemes move beyond single-category analysis to capture the complexity of multiple identities and their impact on health experiences. For example, instead of coding only for ‘immigrant’ or ‘disabled,’ an NI–intersectional coding frame in IPV research might track storylines such as ‘disabled newcomer mother navigating shelter in a rural town, so that the analysis attends to how disability, migration, care responsibilities, and geography jointly shape risk, safety, and agency.

When creating these coding schemes, researchers must consider several key factors. These include creating codes that reflect intersections rather than isolated identity categories, looking for patterns in how different identity combinations influence experiences, and being open to emergent themes that may not fit pre-existing categories (Abrams et al., 2020; Bowleg, 2008). From an NI–intersectional standpoint, this also involves staying close to participants’ own language and metaphors, so that intersectional codes arise from how survivors narrate their identities and relationships to institutions rather than being imposed solely from theoretical grids. For example, when studying the healthcare experiences of women experiencing IPV, a researcher might create intersectional codes such as ‘young immigrant woman with language barriers’ or ‘low-income single mother from racial minority background’, rather than coding based on single categories like ‘age’ or ‘sexual orientation’. In analysis, these codes can then be read alongside full narrative segments; for instance, examining how a ‘young immigrant woman with language barriers’ describes repeated misunderstandings in emergency departments that delay care, revealing how age, status, language, and racism combine to shape her IPV-related health trajectory.

Another key aspect in intersectional analysis is avoiding additive approaches (Baird et al., 2021). Instead of simply aggregating different identity categories, researchers should focus on the complex and often unexpected ways these identities interact. An NI–intersectional approach emphasizes how these interactions show up as turning points, tensions, or contradictions within stories of IPV, such as when religious belonging simultaneously offers spiritual support and community surveillance that makes leaving a partner more dangerous. Representing the dynamic and contextual nature of intersectionality in static research outputs poses a significant challenge. There is an ever-present risk of oversimplifying intersectional experiences (Heilmann, 2021; Ruiz et al., 2021; Turan et al., 2025) which can undermine the very essence of this analytical approach. As such, researchers must navigate the delicate balance between identifying overarching patterns and preserving the complexity of individual experiences. One way NI supports this balance is by presenting carefully contextualized narrative exemplars that hold together structural analysis and the nuance of lived detail. For example, following a single survivor’s evolving relationship with health, legal, and welfare systems over time to show how intersecting oppressions and resources are lived, felt, and resisted across her IPV journey.

Cultivating Reflexivity & Positionality

Researchers play a crucial role in fulfilling methodological commitments by engaging in genuine reflexivity and acknowledging their positionality. Integrating NI and intersectionality into the concept of reflexivity in research creates self-awareness and critical examination (Johnson & Thacker Darrow, 2023). This approach recognizes the researchers’ personal stories, societal positions, and multifaceted identities in IPV studies. Reflexivity, viewed through an intersectional lens, becomes a dynamic process where researchers continually interrogate how their overlapping identities, such as race, gender, class, and sexuality, shape their perspectives and interactions with participants (Spellman, 2024). This intersectional reflexivity acknowledges that researchers’ experiences are not singular but are formed by the complex interplay of various social categories. Centering a NI-intersectional lens means treating the researcher’s story as one narrative strand among many in the research space, asking how it intersects with survivors’ stories and with institutional and historical contexts that shape IPV. For example, a researcher who is also a survivor of IPV may notice moments in an interview where she feels pulled to soften questions about police involvement because of her own distrust of law enforcement and can then reflect on how this affects what gets asked, what is left unsaid, and how safety is discussed with participants. NI adds another layer (Delaney et al., 2024) to this intersectional reflexivity by emphasizing the importance of storytelling in the research process. Researchers engage with their own narratives, critically examining how their personal stories and lived experiences inform their research wonders, methodologies, and interpretations (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). This narrative approach to reflexivity encourages researchers to consider how their own stories of identity, privilege, or marginalization intersect with those of their participants, potentially influencing the co-construction of knowledge during the research process.

In practice, this integrated approach might involve maintaining a research journal that not only documents thoughts and decision-making processes but also explores the researcher’s evolving understanding of their own intersectional identity and its impact on the research (Johnson & Thacker Darrow, 2023). Debriefing sessions with colleagues could focus on unpacking how different aspects of the researcher’s identity come into play during various stages of the research, from conceptualization to data interpretation (Parmenter et al., 2024). These journals and dialogues are not just about feelings but about tracing concrete narrative moments where identity and power shape the research relationship; for instance, noting when a participant shifts to talking about certain topics only after realizing the researcher shares (or does not share) certain experiences. Positionality statements in research reports would go beyond listing relevant identities to explore how these identities intersect and influence the researcher’s perspective, acknowledging the complexity of social locations. An NI–intersectional positionality statement in IPV work might, for example, explicitly discuss how being a clinician–researcher in the same health system where participants seek care affects how women narrate their encounters with providers, and how the researcher interprets stories risk. Participating in reflexivity exercises designed to uncover unconscious biases is an imperative (Hernández-Johnson & Bendixen, 2024) as it helps researchers become aware of deeply ingrained assumptions that might otherwise go unnoticed. These practices collectively help researchers maintain awareness of their own perspectives and how they might be influencing the research process. For example, reflecting on discomfort when participants stay with or return to abusive partners can help researchers surface internalized victim blaming discourses and reorient analysis toward structural constraints, such as poverty, racism, or precarious immigration status, that survivors themselves name in their stories.

This comprehensive approach to reflexivity and positionality in IPV research recognizes that both participants’ and researchers’ identities are not static but are constantly negotiated and renegotiated in relation to the research context. It encourages a deep exploration of power dynamics, not just between researcher and participant, but also within the broader societal structures that shape experiences of IPV. An NI–intersectional orientation helps researchers notice how these dynamics shift across time and place; for instance, how a young queer survivor may speak differently about family violence in a campus setting than in a small hometown clinic, and how the researcher’s own age, sexuality, and institutional affiliation contribute to what feels sayable in each context. By embracing this multifaceted understanding of reflexivity, researchers can produce more nuanced, contextually rich interpretations of IPV experiences, acknowledging the complex dynamic between personal narratives, intersecting identities, and broader social structures. In turn, this can inform more ethically attuned decisions about representation, such as whose stories are foregrounded as typical, how risk is framed, and how recommendations attend to the specific intersections, such as Indigeneity and rurality, disability and poverty, or migration and parenthood, that emerge through the narratives.

As a white, cisgender, queer woman and nurse working in IPV research, I occupy positions of both privilege and marginalization that shape how I hear, interpret, and represent survivors’ stories. My interest in IPV is rooted in personal experience; I have supported family and friends through abusive relationships and navigated my own experiences of violence, which sensitizes me to everyday negotiations of safety and resistance that rarely appear in formal records. Years of nursing practice with women living with coercive control and the harms of oppressive institutions drew me toward methodologies that can hold their complex stories without reducing them to risk categories. These personal and professional trajectories oriented me toward a blended NI–intersectional approach because it mirrors how women’s stories appear in my clinical and personal life as non-linear, situated in communities and histories, and saturated with structural forces such as colonialism, poverty, and heteronormativity. Working within more traditional qualitative frameworks, I often felt that survivors’ narratives were being flattened, and NI–intersectionality offered a way to keep both their complexity and their structural location visible. In this study, I journalled regularly and worked to relinquish some decision-making power by co-developing interview pacing, revisiting safety plans at each meeting, and inviting participants to review and revise their narrative representations before dissemination.

Embodiment of NI–Intersectional Commitments in IPV: Cara’s Vignette

In this inquiry into women’s resistance to IPV, meeting Cara on an Indigenous reserve required designing the entire research encounter around safety, confidentiality, and the realities of coercive control. Our decision to meet only after hours at her workplace health station, in a deserted staff lunchroom, was not merely a logistical preference; it was a safety strategy co-developed to minimize the chance that coworkers, community members, or a current or former partner would link her to an IPV study. Because small communities can quickly identify who remains late in a workplace and why, we agreed that my presence would be framed, if needed, as a routine meeting with an external health research partner, and we used neutral calendar entries and text messages that did not name IPV. When remote contact was necessary, we used platforms and subject lines that resembled ordinary telehealth communication, discussed safe times and devices in advance, and avoided storing identifiable messages on shared phones or email accounts, recognizing that digital surveillance can be a form of technological coercion in IPV contexts.

Each interview with Cara was planned and conducted through a trauma- and violence-informed lens to reduce risk of re-traumatization while still centering her expertise as a narrator of her own life. Before every meeting, we reviewed a brief safety and support plan, including who she could contact locally, what she wanted me to do if she became overwhelmed, and how we would stop or reschedule if circumstances at home or work changed suddenly. Safety and privacy were protected by locking doors, silencing phones, positioning chairs so she could see the entrance, and planning cover stories if someone entered unexpectedly, alongside prior agreement about how to end the interview quickly without raising suspicion. During interviews, I practiced attuned, responsive listening by watching for shifts in her breathing, posture, and eye contact, slowing down or offering grounding breaks when her voice dropped, became flat, or when she described going “totally silent” during past experience where she spoke about IPV. Rather than pushing for chronological detail about traumatic events, questions were framed to follow the arcs she chose. She would often move quickly from “the worst parts” to how she protected her sister, testified in court, or found “one little glimmer of hope” in a Victim Services worker. These considerations honored trauma-informed, fragmented, and nonlinear storytelling as valid narrative forms rather than treating them as methodological problems. Fragmented, hesitant, or circular narratives were treated as meaningful expressions of trauma, shame, and ongoing danger. When disclosures suggested ongoing risk, for herself, her children, or others, we paused the narrative work to clarify immediate safety, revisit the safety plan, and, within local legal and ethical parameters, explore options ranging from no action at her request, to informal safety planning, to mandated reporting if children were at imminent risk.

Attending to power, coercive control, and survivor autonomy meant treating Cara not only as someone who had been harmed, but as someone continually negotiating danger, obligation, love, and resistance in an intersecting landscape of Indigeneity, poverty, racism, and colonial child welfare and justice systems. Her account of quietly removing her glasses before acts of violence, of staying to protect her children, and of testifying when police services no longer required her consent to lay charges, revealed how legal and policy shifts were lived alongside internalized beliefs that “love hurts” and “you stick through it.” An NI–intersectional approach required reading these moments neither as simple failure to leave nor as heroic individual resilience, but as practices of survival and care in a context where leaving could mean homelessness, intensified surveillance, or losing her children to a system already deeply marked by the legacy of residential schools. Autonomy, in this frame, included her right to decide which parts of her story to tell, when to stop, and how her narrative would ultimately be represented in research outputs.

Recruitment and ongoing participation were also shaped by gatekeeping and fear of retaliation. Initial contact came through an Instagram post, but Cara’s decision to reach out was influenced by a friend who had urged her to find a way to share her story to help others, highlighting how informal networks can counter institutional barriers to participation. At the same time, the health station and community services functioned as both gateways and filters where staff controlled who saw recruitment materials and when private conversations were possible, and potential participants weighed whether association with a study on IPV might be noticed by partners, extended family, or local authorities. In response, the study worked with multiple, differently positioned partners, community organizations, clinical services, and informal leaders, so that no single agency-controlled access, and participation never depended on disclosure within systems that already held power over housing, income, or children. Cara and I also discussed what it would mean if her story circulated locally or nationally and negotiated pseudonyms, composite details, and the right to withdraw segments from dissemination, acknowledging that gatekeeping can also happen at the level of how, and by whom, stories are retold.

Establishing trust in a context of coercive control and long histories of silencing meant accepting that disclosure would be gradual, partial, and contingent. Cara’s comment that she “didn’t want others to look at [her] differently” signaled both internalized stigma and a realistic assessment of community responses. As such, early meetings focused on what she hoped the research might do, for other women, for her children, before moving into more painful parts of her story. Relational ethics meant recognizing that the emotional labour of telling her story was significant for both of us and allowing space for shared silence. It also involved acknowledging when her accounts resonated with my own histories of anticipating violence and being transparent about how I would care for my own wellbeing and seek supervision, so that she did not feel responsible for my reactions. After each interview we debriefed, returned to the present, and I provided written information about local and remote supports. Where safe and desired, I followed up within 24–48 hours via a pre-agreed channel to check in and re-offer resources. These steps did not remove risk, but they sought to ensure that the research encounter did not reproduce the unpredictability, lack of control, and abandonment that so often characterize abusive relationships.

Working with Cara in these ways directly shaped the methodological commitments articulated in this paper. Being power conscious emerged from tracing how colonialism, racism, gender, and class structured her exposure to violence, her interactions with police and victim services, and her capacity to speak, alongside continuous reflection on how my own positionality and institutional affiliations shaped what was sayable in our meetings. Contextual and temporal awareness developed through staying with the ways she moved between past, present, and imagined futures, and how policy changes (such as mandatory police charges) and shifting roles (mother, partner, student, worker) altered what forms of resistance were possible across time. Intersectional analysis grew from coding whole storylines like ‘Indigenous mother on reserve navigating courts and child protection’ rather than single categories, keeping structural location central in interpretation. Reflexivity and positionality became not a stand-alone section but an ongoing practice of journaling, supervisory dialogue, and participant feedback that tracked how my own discomfort, assumptions, and institutional location were shaping decisions about recruitment, interviewing, analysis, and knowledge translation. In this sense, Cara’s story did not simply illustrate a pre-existing framework; it co-produced and tested the NI–intersectional commitments that this paper advances as one possible response to the distinctive methodological and ethical demands of IPV research.

Conclusion

This paper demonstrates that blending narrative inquiry with intersectionality advances a flexible, ethically attuned methodology for studying IPV that is capable of capturing survivors’ complex, situated experiences while attending to structural power, safety, and agency. By foregrounding stories over time and place alongside analyses of intersecting systems such as racism, colonialism, ableism, and heteronormativity, this approach directly addresses the longstanding challenges of definition, measurement, and ethics in IPV research. Central to this methodology are four interrelated commitments which include being power-conscious in the production and use of knowledge; situating narratives within their contextual and temporal specificities; conducting rigorous intersectional analysis that traces multiple axes of oppression and privilege; and cultivating reflexivity and positionality to acknowledge how researchers shape inquiry itself. Together, these principles anchor the blended NI–intersectional framework, ensuring that analytic depth is balanced with ethical attentiveness and relational accountability.

Treating IPV as a methodologically distinctive domain underscores the need for designs that neither flatten survivors’ narratives into decontextualized variables nor reproduce harms through surveillance, silencing, or exclusion. Grounded in these commitments, future studies can more effectively align with survivor-defined priorities, embed trauma- and violence-informed practices, and cultivate enduring, power-conscious collaborations with communities and frontline practitioners. Extending this framework across diverse populations and methodological innovations, such as participatory and arts-based approaches, offers vital opportunities to further theorize the dynamics of reflexivity, ethics, and equity in longitudinal IPV research.

Footnotes

ORCID iDs

April Mackey

Jodie Bigalky

Pammla Petrucka

Ethical Considerations

Ethical approval was obtained from the University of Saskatchewan Behavioral Research Ethics Board (4055). Written participant consent was obtained.

Consent to Participate

All participants provided written informed consent for this work.

Consent for Publication

All participants provided written consent for this work to be published.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Data Availability Statement

The full stories are available as a data set, upon request.*

Author Biographies

April Mackey is a registered nurse and interdisciplinary scholar focused on health equity for marginalized and gender-diverse communities. Her research uses participatory and narrative methods to address issues like gendered violence, menstrual health, and access to health services. She collaborates globally to advance trauma-informed, equity-oriented interventions for survivors.

Jodie Bigalky, Assistant Professor at the University of Saskatchewan College of Nursing, specializes in perinatal and women’s health. Since 2004, she has taught in the BSN program and researched health disparities among disadvantaged women. Her recent work explores menstrual hygiene, period poverty, and intimate partner violence. She also practices clinically in labour and birth care while remaining active in national associations.

Pammla Petrucka, a proud US ask graduate, is a nurse scientist committed to research excellence and innovation. Her work focuses on marginalized populations locally and globally, emphasizing women’s health, menstrual hygiene equity, and healthcare access. Leading diverse teams, she engages in global health initiatives, advancing awareness and access to public health and One Health innovations.

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Blending Methodological Commitments: Narrative Inquiry and Intersectionality in Responding to the Challenges of IPV Research

Abstract

Background

Aim

Methods

Results

Implications

Keywords

Blending Narrative Inquiry and Intersectionality: Theoretical Foundations

Core Methodological Commitments

Ethical Approval

Being Power Conscious

Considering Contextual and Temporal Awareness

Engaging in Intersectional Analysis

Cultivating Reflexivity & Positionality

Embodiment of NI–Intersectional Commitments in IPV: Cara’s Vignette

Conclusion

Footnotes

ORCID iDs

Ethical Considerations

Consent to Participate

Consent for Publication

Funding

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Data Availability Statement

Author Biographies

References