Table 2 Participatory hermeneutic analysis for the development of ethical guidelines

Stage 1: Developing a naïve interpretation of the meaning of the topic under investigation

Semi-standardised interviews about the meaning of VAWG with community participants, conducted by CBRs;

Drawing from the interviews and in collaboration with the research team, CBRs develop a set of guiding phrases for how people should respond to a woman in the community experiencing violence;

Stage 2: Identifying themes and sub-themes, and back-checking these against the naïve interpretation

CBRs identify themes arising from the interviews about decisions around responding to women experiencing violence;

Grouping these themes into organising categories (higher order themes);

Stage 3: Validate themes against stories of lived experience that tell us about the essence of the topic under investigation

CBRs validate the guiding phrases about how community members should respond to violence against the themes and categories;

Further validation provided through comparison with local myths and stories.