Minoritised Ethnic Women's Experiences of Domestic Abuse and Barriers to Help-Seeking: A Summary of the Evidence

Annex 1. Literature Search Strategy

An initial Scottish Government Library Search was conducted in January/February 23 before the work began, which sought to identify any literature in Scotland on intersectionality and the experiences of gender based violence. The following search terms were used:

(violence against women) OR (domestic abuse) OR (sexual violence) OR (gender based violence) AND (intersectionality) AND (Scotland) OR (UK)

Parameters for this search covered the last 5 years; UK; peer-reviewed and non-peer reviewed.

Databases searched:

• Idox
• KandE
• Knowledge Network
• Policy Commons
• ProQuest
• Social Care Online
• Google Advanced Search
• Google Scholar

This generated 88 results many of which were not subsequently relevant as the research questions were later refined to focus on minoritised ethnic women and domestic abuse.

A further SG library search was conducted in June 23 to gather literature on intersectionality, domestic abuse, and minoritised ethnic women, in Scotland or the UK. The following search terms were used:

(intersectionality) AND (minority ethnic women) OR (racialised women) OR (BAME women) OR (BME women)

AND

(domestic abuse) OR (domestic violence) OR (violence against women and girls) OR (sexual violence)

Parameters for this search covered the last 10 years; UK; peer-reviewed and non-peer reviewed.

Databases searched:

• Idox – requested 16/06/23
• KandE
• Knowledge Network
• Policy Commons
• ProQuest
• Google Advanced Search

This generated 53 results.

Further, more targeted literature searches were conducted (between June-November 23) used the following search terms:

• (domestic abuse) OR (domestic violence) AND (racialised women) or (BME women) or (minoritized women) OR (BAME women) AND (intersectionality)
• (domestic abuse) OR (domestic violence) AND (racialised women) OR (BME women) OR "(minoritized women) OR (BAME women)

Searches were then undertaken to identify any additional research available on other minoritised ethnic groups including: "Chinese women", "Sikh women", "Nigerian women" and "African women".

For the purposes of the report, only peer-reviewed articles were included in the analysis. This resulted in 38 journal and book articles being selected for inclusion.

Following the independent peer review an additional 10 articles were incorporated into the research findings, resulting in a total of 48 articles included in the evidence review. As well as this, an additional 14 sources were reviewed and incorporated into the report e.g. to provide background/context. Some of the additional sources fell outwith the original search parameters (e.g. published more than 10 years ago) but were included as they provided useful insight or information.

A full list of resources accessed using the KandE search engine is available here: list of KandE resources.