ABSTRACT
The focus of this chapter is an analysis of ethnographic data collected through research at an agency for battered women and their children located in Chicago, Illinois. The data were collected in a 10-month period from the summer of 1992 through the spring of 1993. Data were generated through three key methods. The major source of data comes from in-depth interviews with regular agency clients conducted over the course of 6 months. The initial interviews involved a core group of eight informants. All of the interviewees, whose names have been changed to protect anonymity, knew of my research project. I verified the transcriptions of the first set of interviews with each of them. Of the core group, three of the women were European American, two were African American, and three were Hispanic American. Their ages ranged from 20 to 38, though only one informant was willing to specify her exact age (a European American woman, aged 23).
