The Victim’s Right to Intervene as an Injured Party in Criminal Proceedings: A Multidimensional and Interdisciplinary Assessment of Current Dutch Legal Practice

Abstract

to place the results from legal and non-legal studies in the right context. As we will explain, our position with regard to the mixed methods debate is a 'mixed one'. We do not claim to have an answer to the methodological issue of whether the use of mixed methods amounts to a 'third methodology'; our aim is solely to provide a description of our use of a mixed methods approach (Section 3). 5 After this we will describe our case: researching the victim's right to intervene as an injured party in Dutch legal practice. By referring to the research design and results we will also illustrate how triangulation may work in practice (Sections 4 to 9). To conclude, we will explain why this research endorses the fact that triangulation is an appropriate approach for our interdisciplinary assessment of Dutch legal practice. We will explain the opportunities and difficulties that we encountered throughout the research and that may be helpful for others who may want to embark on a similar interdisciplinary study (Section 10). We do wish to add a 'disclaimer', however. Our aim is to report on 'the lessons learned', not to provide an extensive report on how to intensively integrate results from social and legal sciences. 5 With regard to this debate see: J.W. Cresswell, Designing and conducting mixed methods research (2010). Creswell opts for the use of mixed methods as an 'approach' (pp. 5-7). Applying the term 'methodology' would imply a consolidation of the underlying philosophical assumptions with regard to the application of the methods. In our opinion, notwithstanding the current developments, the state of the art within legal empirical studies cannot validate such a high-level qualification.