Knowledge discovery in research on domestic violence: an overview of the last fifty years

Abstract

PurposeThe database of the Web of Science (WoS) was searched for publications from January 1945–May 7, 2020 on the topic of domestic violence in titles, abstracts and keywords. The references were analyzed using the R bibliometrix package, and abstracts were analyzed using latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) with collapsed Gibbs sampling to obtain topics related to domestic violence.Design/methodology/approachThe aim of the study is to explore and provide an overview of research carried out on domestic violence, in its various aspects, over the past fifty years.FindingsAs a result of the research, the authors can assert that in the last fifty years, 32,298 authors have produced 19,495 documents on the theme of policing strategy and related subjects in 111 countries. Scientific production in this area grows at a rate of 12.81 per year. The United States of America is the leading country in publications with 48.14%, followed by the United Kingdom with 7.57% and Australia with 6.05%. Regarding universities, the highlight is the University of California with 664 publications, followed by the University of London with 515 and the University of North Carolina with 484. As for journals, the highlight is the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Journal of Family Violence and Violence Against Women, which account for more than 14.32% of all indexed literature. Regarding the authors, the highlight is Campbell J.C and Feder G. Probabilistic topic modeling revealed that 18% of the topics concentrate 90% of all tokens. Topic 1 accounts for 27.9% of the sample and conducts research related to intimate partner violence.Practical implicationsAs a practical implication of using the LDA in the bibliographic review, we infer that its capacity to explore large masses of data allows the researcher to explore an infinitely greater amount than the traditional methods of systematic literature review.Originality/valueThe value of these studies is summarized in the presentation of an overview on the theme in the last fifty years, offering the opportunity for other researchers to use this research as a starting point for other analyses.