>>41177568Literature and research regarding domestic violence in lesbian relationships is relatively limited, especially in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. Many different factors play into this, such as "different definitions of domestic violence, non-random, self selected and opportunistic sampling methods (often organisation or agency based, or advertising for participants who have experienced violence) and different methods and types of data collected".[10] This causes results to be unreliable, thus making it difficult to make general assumptions about the rates of lesbian domestic violence. This has caused rates of violence in lesbian relationships to range from 17 to 73 percent as of the 1990s, being too large of a scale to accurately determine the pervasiveness of lesbian abuse in the community.[10]
Since not all lesbians are open about their sexuality, large random samples are difficult to obtain and therefore are unable to show trends in the general lesbian community.[10] Research samples tend to be smaller, causing report rates of violence to be lower than they may be. This is "a consequence of the invisibility of such violence and fear of homophobic reactions".[10]
