research gender based violence in your community

• Skip to main content

Additional menu

Gender Focus

Exploring connections between socio-economic factors and violence against women

Narrating the Community Experience of Gender Based Violence (GBV)

posted on May 10, 2022

What is the problem we are trying to address?

Gender based violence is a major global problem and is normalised in different ways in different contexts. 

Research on the topic of GBV that can lead to behaviour change is essential, but the usual quantitative and qualitative research tools don’t give us the whole story. 

To get a fuller picture, community members need to be actively involved in the research process, so that their voice is heard, and an understanding is shared throughout (and potentially beyond) the life of the project of how GBV is being experienced and changing over time in their community.

Introducing the community narration approach

Our team members, therefore, felt we needed to complement the usual research methods with an approach that enabled members of local communities to narrate their experiences 

over time and interact with the research team, building up trust and dialogue with the researchers.

This led us to develop the idea of involving local ‘narrators’ who act on behalf of a community. These narrators share stories of change and highlight how violence is being experienced in their communities and what interventions are taking place (by government agencies, NGOs or the private sector) that are addressing GBV. 

Through this process, we collectively learn about attitudes, behaviours, gaps in supporting interventions and also about their priority needs.

Narrating the impact of disasters on GBV

We started to pilot and use this approach in Nepal and Myanmar, where the focus of our project was on gaining insights into how women in communities affected by disasters and subsequent displacement were exposed to new or increased forms of violence. 

We termed this process ‘displacement narration’ and have applied this approach now for more than two years, and we have used a similar ‘community’ narrator approach in Bangladesh. 

Prepare your research team to support the narrator approach

The first step taken is to train research team members on how to use the narrator approach, and they develop topic areas related to GBV for regular discussion with the narrators who communicate what is happening in their community and how this is changing over time.  The narrators who become part of the research team need to be good at building relationships, communicating, listening, observing, and facilitating conversations. Ideally, they come from the districts where field research is taking place.

Choose your narrators carefully

The selection of narrators is critical, as community narrators should not be biased or representative of a particular group in the community but should have excellent relationships and trust across their community.

Most importantly selected narrators should be in a position where they can discuss and share community experiences related to gender-based violence, giving careful consideration to the power dynamics and to the sensitive and often confidential nature of the topics, 

Great care needs to be taken over personal data, and to also ensure that victims of GBV are not put at any risk or under any pressure to share stories in a way that leads to re-traumatisation.

“It has been a learning and sharing journey.  I used to see things at the surface earlier, but with the process, I learnt that when you start looking into things minutely in the community you start to connect things and the bigger picture is more clearly seen” Samjhana Bhujel (displacement narrator from Morang, Nepal

Ensure the community benefits from the narration process

Firstly, we hope that this approach will give the community a voice, and they can shape the research agenda and play a significant role in becoming increasingly involved in activities and decision-making processes that affect them.

Findings from the research study should be regularly fed back to the community via the narrator so that they can benefit immediately in direct or indirect ways.

They can also have the opportunity to discuss and challenge the findings and any recommendations coming from the research. 

Our hope is that the process will develop an awareness of GBV, prompt relevant and timely interventions that help communities to reduce GBV through changing attitudes and behaviours, and better services and support for victims of GBV. 

Address safeguarding and ethical considerations

The study of GBV can lead to sensitive issues and experiences being shared, and this has been the case in using the narrator approach. Lots of harrowing stories of violence have emerged, and whilst these have been important to learn from, they also require following up with relevant authorities.

Key Concerns related to safeguarding:

• Working in partnership with specialist organisations that can support women who are in distress and/or need advocacy support. 
• Strict ethical protocols are needed, and all project members should undergo training in how to operationalise them. 
• The process of asking a participant to share their stories should be experienced by them as empowering. 

Our reflection led us to focus more on themes that change over time rather than traumatic personal experiences, and where such experiences are shared, we always anonymise names and try to edit material so that individuals cannot be easily identified. 

Photos are used wherever possible to support the narration process, but again care is taken to obtain permission and not use photos of children or vulnerable adults.

Evolve the approach for use with different participants

We believe this approach can be beneficial in a wide range of studies which don’t necessarily have a focus on GBV. However, consider carefully how best to implement the narrator approach with your selected communities and study participants.

We are now exploring how the narrator approach could be used within a study on FGM with children (aged 11+) and young adults in Kenya. 

Given the ethical issues of involving children, we are in the process of evolving the approach so that we pilot working with “narrator groups” in schools within communities. This means that safeguarding risks are reduced, and the groups themselves can benefit over time through facilitated conversations related to gender and how they experience it within their communities.

Final Thoughts

Reflecting on the benefits of the narrator approach, Professor Tamsin Bradley comments as follows:

“Longitudinal insights are very rarely captured in development and hardly even in fragile contexts in which people live with multiple insecurities. Giving voice to the most marginalised should be central to any process committed to inclusive transformation.”

Follow Gender Focus on LinkedIn and Twitter to stay up to date on insights from research into women’s rights, gender-based violence, social inclusion (including disability and health), and harmful cultural practices.

Pioneering research to fight gender-based violence

“Gender-based violence is too niche. There’s very little existing data on the issue—it would be too hard to pursue as a research topic.”

That’s how her journey began. 

From an early age, Karmini heard firsthand from her female family members and fellow students stories of “horrific” experiences of sexual harassment across India and in her hometown of New Delhi. Then in 2012, faced with the news of the Nirbhaya rape case of a student in Delhi, Karmini’s frustration peaked. “It was a game changer for me,” Karmini says. “Everyone around me lived in fear after the incident. It changed our DNA.” 

After she started her PhD in economics at the University of Warwick in 2015, Karmini began looking into the academic research around gender-based violence and harassment, only to find that there was very little—particularly on economic solutions to the problem. Should she shift her research focus to this topic that deeply inspired her? The lack of focus, funding and academic mentors on the subject posed serious obstacles. 

She grew increasingly disillusioned, academically and personally, feeling that she wasn’t compelled and motivated to move forward with her studies. “I was frustrated and angry that [gender-based violence] has been happening for so long and that no one was addressing it in mainstream economics,” she said. Watching her disillusionment grow, her family and friends encouraged her to start exploring it further, and to “give it a go.” After much introspection, she pivoted her academic focus, using the tools of economics to investigate issues around sexual harassment, gender segregation, and discrimination.

So Karmini started talking with NGOs that were working on gender-based violence with programs on the ground. She attended their workshops and observed their sexual harassment awareness trainings. She attended training sessions, collected qualitative data, talked to women on streets near campuses, and formulated research plans.

Then #MeToo happened. 

The 2017 #MeToo movement in the US catapulted public awareness and sensitivity to issues of sexual harassment and sexual assault, both in the United States and around the world. By the time #MeToo arrived in India in 2018, Karmini saw that she was ahead of the curve with her research plans already in place. “Because I had been preparing for it and thinking about it for so long,” she explains,  “right at the beginning of #MeToo, I was prepared with my research ideas. I feel like everything prepared me for that moment.” The world turned its attention to gender-based violence and research funding began to flow. She began collaborating with nonprofit Safecity, and with guidance from academic advisors and support from The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab , she began undertaking a randomized controlled trial that surveyed 5,000 male and female students across three colleges in Delhi in order to understand the impact of awareness trainings on actual sexual harassment incidents reported by women in these institutions.

“It’s very important to me not to overly intellectualize this topic. I really want to start talking about solutions,” she explains. In 2022, Karmini became a postdoctoral fellow at the King Center on Global Development, opening new doors to pursue a long-held dream of convening researchers to focus on the topic of gender-based violence. She saw the need to leverage research from around the world to explore solutions in low- and middle-income countries, where the problem can be acute, and to create connections between emerging researchers and those already established in the field. Karmini explains that her King Center fellowship, “gave me the freedom, resources, traction, and access to people who would listen seriously.”

The resulting 2023 Violence and Harassment Against Women Conference , hosted by the King Center from November 30 to December 1 at Stanford University, and supported by Arnold Ventures and the USC Marshall School of Business, was a unique convening. Alongside Karmini, organizers Emily Nix, Assistant Professor of Finance and Business Economics at USC Marshall, and Alessandra Voena, Professor of Economics at Stanford University, brought together 13 leading researchers from 12 universities around the world, to present papers on the topic. “This conference brought together some of the best minds working on the issues of harassment and violence against women,” explains Nix. “Having everyone in a single venue, along with funders, NGO leaders, and others will hopefully allow this field to grow in a way that has an important impact on future policy in this area.”

The conference included sessions on: the economic costs of violence against women; causes of intimate partner violence; harassment at work; violence in the household; as well as policy solutions such as female help desks, targeted attitude interventions and sexual harassment awareness trainings. Karmini presented her paper “ Tackling Sexual Harassment: Short and Long Run Experimental Evidence from India. ” 

Conference co-organizer Voena describes Karmini as “a phenomenal driving force.”  Nix adds, “Karmini's research is really innovative in terms of how to address harassment. What I especially admire about her contribution and perspective is that she is also focused on finding solutions to these problems, and building a community of scholars with that goal in mind.”

As Karmini concludes her King Center fellowship and joins Imperial College London as an assistant professor of economics in January 2024, a question remains: “As a young researcher in a field that is very skewed toward publishing papers—how do you orient your energy toward policy and action-making change? For me, it’s not just about research, it's also about changing people's lives. My goal is to continue learning about this from other researchers, here at Stanford and elsewhere, who have succeeded at integrating research with social change.”

Editor’s note: The subject of this story prefers that the author refer to her by first name only due to personal considerations.

More News Topics

Political economist takes on role as new faculty director of the king center.

• Center News

Q&A with King Center Predoctoral Research Fellow Besindone Dumi-Leslie

• Next Generation of Scholars
• Gender and Equity
• Governance and Institutions

The economics of education with Eric Hanushek

• Media Mentions
• Education and Skills

• Open access
• Published: 08 March 2019

Social norms and beliefs about gender based violence scale: a measure for use with gender based violence prevention programs in low-resource and humanitarian settings

• Nancy Perrin 1 ,
• Mendy Marsh 2 ,
• Amber Clough 1 ,
• Amelie Desgroppes 3 ,
• Clement Yope Phanuel 4 ,
• Ali Abdi 3 ,
• Francesco Kaburu 3 ,
• Silje Heitmann 5 ,
• Masumi Yamashina 6 ,
• Brendan Ross 7 ,
• Sophie Read-Hamilton 8 ,
• Rachael Turner 1 ,
• Lori Heise 1 , 9 &
• Nancy Glass 1  

Conflict and Health volume  13 , Article number:  6 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

173k Accesses

78 Citations

43 Altmetric

Metrics details

Gender-based violence (GBV) primary prevention programs seek to facilitate change by addressing the underlying causes and drivers of violence against women and girls at a population level. Social norms are contextually and socially derived collective expectations of appropriate behaviors. Harmful social norms that sustain GBV include women’s sexual purity, protecting family honor over women’s safety, and men’s authority to discipline women and children. To evaluate the impact of GBV prevention programs, our team sought to develop a brief, valid, and reliable measure to examine change over time in harmful social norms and personal beliefs that maintain and tolerate sexual violence and other forms of GBV against women and girls in low resource and complex humanitarian settings.

The development and testing of the scale was conducted in two phases: 1) formative phase of qualitative inquiry to identify social norms and personal beliefs that sustain and justify GBV perpetration against women and girls; and 2) testing phase using quantitative methods to conduct a psychometric evaluation of the new scale in targeted areas of Somalia and South Sudan.

The Social Norms and Beliefs about GBV Scale was administered to 602 randomly selected men ( N  = 301) and women (N = 301) community members age 15 years and older across Mogadishu, Somalia and Yei and Warrup, South Sudan. The psychometric properties of the 30-item scale are strong. Each of the three subscales, “Response to Sexual Violence,” “Protecting Family Honor,” and “Husband’s Right to Use Violence” within the two domains, personal beliefs and injunctive social norms, illustrate good factor structure, acceptable internal consistency, reliability, and are supported by the significance of the hypothesized group differences.

Conclusions

We encourage and recommend that researchers and practitioners apply the Social Norms and Beliefs about GBV Scale in different humanitarian and global LMIC settings and collect parallel data on a range of GBV outcomes. This will allow us to further validate the scale by triangulating its findings with GBV experiences and perpetration and assess its generalizability across diverse settings.

Introduction

Gender-based violence (GBV) remains one of the most prevalent and persistent issues facing women and girls globally [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]. Conflict and other humanitarian emergencies place women and girls at increased risk of many forms of GBV [ 5 , 6 , 7 ]. The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) 2015 Guidelines for Integrating GBV Interventions in Humanitarian Action defines GBV as any harmful act that is perpetrated against a person’s will and that is based on socially ascribed (i.e., gender) differences between females and males. It includes acts that inflict physical, sexual or mental harm or suffering, threats of such acts, coercion, and other deprivations of liberty. These harmful acts can occur in public and in private [ 8 ]. There continues to be limited global information on the burden of GBV in humanitarian emergencies. One systematic review found that approximately one in five refugees or displaced women in complex humanitarian settings experienced sexual violence, though this is likely an underestimation of the true prevalence given the many barriers to survivors’ disclosure of GBV [ 9 ]. A recent population-based survey on GBV across the three regions of Somalia examined typology and scope of GBV victimization with 2376 women (15 years and older). The study found that among women, 35.6% (95% CI 33.4 to 37.9) reported lifetime experiences of physical or sexual intimate partner violence (IPV) and 16.5% (95% CI 15.1 to 18.1) reported lifetime experience of physical or sexual non-partner violence (NPV) since the age of 15 years. Women at greatest risk of GBV (IPV and NPV) included membership in a minority clan, displacement from home because of conflict or natural disaster, husband/partner use of khat (e.g., leaves chewed or drunk as a stimulant), exposure to parental violence and violence during childhood. Women survivors of GBV consistently report negative impacts on physical, mental and reproductive health. Often negative health and social consequences are never addressed because women do not disclose GBV to providers or access health care or other services (e.g., protection, legal, traditional authorities) because of social norms that blame the woman for the assault (e.g., she was out alone after dark, she was not modestly dressed, she is working outside the home), norms that prioritize protecting family honor over safety of the survivor, and institutional acceptance of GBV as a normal and expected part of displacement and conflict [ 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ].

GBV primary prevention in humanitarian settings

GBV primary prevention programs seek to facilitate change by addressing the underlying causes and drivers of GBV at a population level. Such programs have traditionally included initiatives to economically empower girls and women, enhanced legal protections for GBV, enshrining women’s rights and gender equality within national legislation and policy, and other measures to promote gender equality. Increasingly, programs are also targeting transformation of social norms that justify and sustain acceptance of GBV. Social norms are contextually and socially derived collective expectations of appropriate behaviors [ 14 ]. Families and communities have shared beliefs and unspoken rules that both proscribe and prescribe behaviors that implicitly convey that GBV against women is acceptable, even normal [ 15 , 16 ]. This includes social norms pertaining to sexual purity, family honor, and men’s authority over women and children in the family. Community leaders, institutions, and service providers, such as health care, education and law enforcement, can reinforce harmful social norms by, for example, blaming women and girls for the sexual assault they experience, or by justifying a husband’s use of physical violence as a means to discipline his wife. Both behaviors are viewed as essential to protect the family’s reputation in the larger community [ 16 ].

Diverse academic disciplines have developed different theories to explain the complexity of social norms and their influence on behavior. We use social norms theory as elaborated in social psychology [ 17 ]. This theory conceptualizes social norms as beliefs of two types: 1) an individual’s beliefs about what others typically do in a given situation (i.e., descriptive norm); and 2) their beliefs about what others expect them to do in a given situation (i.e., injunctive norm) [ 18 , 19 , 20 ]. For this study, we focus on developing a measure of injunctive norms—defined in this case as beliefs about what influential others (e.g., parents, siblings, peers, religious leaders, teachers) expect individuals to do in the case of GBV.

Even with the multiple challenges of humanitarian settings (e.g., separation of families, insecurity and limited resources), there is an opportunity to develop, implement, and evaluate innovations in GBV programming. In such settings, displacement and conflict have created situations where social rules about who can do what necessarily bend to accommodate new realities [ 16 ]. Women, for example, may be forced to assume new roles in the family and community, such as having decision-making power and control over household financial resources and assets and working outside the home to help support the family. These changing roles then lead to shifts in behavior and potentially power relations in the family and community that challenge traditional norms around male authority and women’s relegation to the domestic sphere. These circumstances can provide an opportunity to initiate GBV primary prevention efforts, such as those that engage community leaders and members in critical reflection on norms that legitimate gender inequality and what actions can be taken by the individual, family, and community to change norms that cause harm [ 15 , 16 ]. Acknowledging the potential of the humanitarian setting as an opportunity for primary prevention programming and recognizing the need to strengthen GBV response systems, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) built on their work to end female genital mutilation using social norms theory [ 19 ] to develop the Communities Care Program: Transforming Lives and Preventing Violence Program (Communities Care) [ 21 ]. The goal of Communities Care is to create safer communities for women and girls by challenging social norms that sustain GBV and catalyzing new norms that uphold women and girls’ equality, safety, and dignity [ 15 , 21 ]. The description of the Communities Care program is published elsewhere [ 15 , 16 , 21 ].

However, a significant limitation for evaluating the effectiveness of GBV prevention programs such as Communities Care is the lack of validated instruments to measure change in norms supporting GBV. Therefore, our goal was to create a brief, valid, and reliable measure to examine change over time in harmful social norms and personal beliefs that maintain and tolerate sexual violence and other forms of GBV in low resource and complex humanitarian settings.

While validated instruments exist to measure attitudes towards gender roles and some types of GBV [ 22 , 23 ], social norms are different from individual attitudes. For nearly two decades, the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), which are nationally representative surveys conducted in low and middle-income countries (LMIC), have provided information on attitudes about the acceptability of IPV or wife beating. Respondents are asked whether a man is justified in beating his wife in five different situations: a wife goes out without her husband’s permission; she neglects to keep the children well fed; she argues with her husband in public; she refuses to have sexual intercourse with her husband; and she does not prepare her husband’s meal on time. Response options for these questions are as follows: “agree,” “disagree,” “refuse to answer,” and “don’t know.” These questions are designed specifically to elicit personal beliefs (attitudes) about IPV; they have generally functioned well in that they capture various levels of endorsement of IPV both within and among settings, and respondents routinely vary their answers based on the transgression mentioned.

Investigators, however, have raised questions about whether the DHS questions reflect respondents’ own personal beliefs on the acceptability of beating or women’s perception of the social norm operative in their setting. Cognitive interviews with women in Bangladesh, for example, suggested that women’s interpretation of the attitude questions switched between personal and normative beliefs, although it is difficult to know whether this happens routinely in other settings, or whether it was a function of the especially low literacy and female mobility of rural Bangladesh [ 24 , 25 ].

Scientists have also warned that changing key features of a scenario (e.g., setting, perpetrator, infraction committed, perceived intentionality) can influence measured attitudes and perceived norms on the acceptability of GBV. For example, in Uganda, researchers randomly assigned participants to answer attitude and norm questions on wife beating using three separate wordings [ 26 ]. The attitude questions compared the traditional wording of the DHS (whether a man is justified in beating his wife for 5 different infractions) to more contextualized scenarios that depicted the wife’s transgression as either willful or beyond her control. To elicit norms related to wife beating, participants were asked about the extent to which they thought other people in their village (reference group) would think the behavior described was justified. Response options for the five questions followed a four-point Likert-type scale: “all or almost all, for example, at least 90% of people in your village,” “more than half but fewer than 90% of people in your village,” “fewer than half but more than 10% of people in your village,” and “very few or none, for example, less than 10% of people in your village.”

The findings demonstrated that when measuring both attitudes and social norms, adding contextual details about the intentionality of a wife’s transgression changed participants’ perception of the acceptability of IPV. In the vignettes, wives who intentionally violated norms about acceptable wifely behavior had a “large” effect [ 27 ] on increasing the number of items for which wife beating was viewed as acceptable. In contrast, the vignette that depicted the wife as unintentionally violating norms of behavior had a “small” effect in decreasing the number of items where IPV was considered acceptable. The study authors interpreted this difference as measurement error, arguing that question wordings without context may mis-represent attitudes and norms on violence. While context does matter, the specific details added in this study were likely critical to its findings. Qualitative studies have repeatedly shown that wife beating in LMIC is understood as “discipline” and its acceptability varies depending on the nature of the transgression (whether it is perceived as for “just cause”), who is doing the “correction,” and whether the beating stays within acceptable bounds of severity [ 24 , 25 , 28 , 29 , 30 ].

In this paper, we describe the formative research and psychometric testing of the Social Norms and Beliefs about Gender Based Violence (GBV) Scale . The Scale is designed to measure change over time in harmful social norms and personal beliefs associated with violence against women and girls among men and women community members in low resource and complex humanitarian settings. The development and validation of the scale was essential for use in measuring change in harmful social norms and beliefs among community members in districts and regions implementing the Communities Care program in two countries with ongoing humanitarian crises, Somalia and South Sudan. The development and testing of the scale was conducted in two phases: 1) formative phase of qualitative inquiry to identify social norms and personal beliefs that sustain and justify GBV perpetration against women and girls across the lifespan in low-resource and humanitarian contexts; and 2) testing phase using quantitative methods to conduct a psychometric evaluation of the new scale in targeted areas of Somalia and South Sudan.

Study settings

The formative and testing phases of the psychometric evaluation was conducted in two countries, Somalia and South Sudan. In Southern Central Somalia, we worked in four districts (Bondhere, Karaan, Wadajir, Yaqshid ) in Mogadishu and in South Sudan, we worked in two regions (Yei and Warrap). Somalia has experienced more than two decades of conflict as well as ongoing emergencies including drought, famine, and a large number of internally displaced people (IDPs). Yei is located in southwestern South Sudan and was the re-entry point for South Sudanese who fled to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda during the Second Sudanese Civil War. Since many people stayed in Yei upon returning, there is conflict between those native to Yei and IDPs from other regions of South Sudan. Warrap is in the northern region of South Sudan and is a gateway between South Sudan and Sudan. Militia activity, cattle-raiding, and conflict over oil, along with the influx of people returning to South Sudan, has caused significant challenges for access to and use of limited resources. The districts and regions in each country were selected based on multiple factors. We focused efforts on districts and regions where GBV reporting systems existed and could be accessed to generate data on case reports and referrals. When engaging GBV survivors and other community members in research on sensitive issues it is essential to have partnerships with diverse service sectors (e.g., health, protection, legal, advocacy) for participants that disclose GBV and request referrals. The evaluation also required safe access to the sites and security while doing the study for both participants and local researchers, therefore this required establishing relationships and obtaining permission from national, regional, and district governmental authorities and ministries as well as traditional leaders in the communities.

Phase 1: Formative phase methods

For the formative phase, we worked with local partners to identify male and female key stakeholders (e.g., religious leaders, youth and women’s group leaders, advocates for GBV survivors, health providers, child protection staff, police officers, traditional leaders, elders, and teachers) to advance our understanding of and identify harmful and protective social norms associated with GBV within and across settings. The focus group guide was developed and translated to the local language in partnership with team members in each setting. Johns Hopkins provided in-depth training to local staff on facilitating focus groups, data collection, human subjects’ protections, working with distressed participants, and providing referrals to services as appropriate. The focus group guide focused on identification of social norms that protect women and girls from sexual violence and other forms of GBV, norms that are harmful (e.g., hide, sustain, or encourage), norms about disclosing and reporting sexual violence and other forms of GBV to authorities, and who are the people in the family or larger community that are influential in maintaining and changing social norms. For example, the team used scenarios created from aggregating GBV experiences in each setting to explore social norms about the situations and the survivor-perpetrator relationship. We varied the perpetrator and circumstances in each scenario from the perpetrator being a family member, a known person to the family but not part of the family, and an unknown person. For each scenario, focus group participants were asked about their beliefs and norms about how the family and community would respond to victims of the sexual assault or other forms of GBV, if the assault would be reported to authorities, and reasons for reporting or not reporting the assault.

Qualitative analysis

A qualitative descriptive approach was used to identify themes related to harmful and protective social norms within and across settings. The transcripts were read by three research team members to identify thematic codes. Themes with sub-themes were identified and defined by exemplars or quotes from the transcripts. The three researchers independently assigned codes and discrepancies in coding were discussed in weekly meetings. The codes and corresponding quotes were used to write items for the scale representing each of the identified themes. The themes, sub-themes, and items were then shared with the in-country teams in a joint Somalia/South Sudan meeting. The relevance of the themes and their interpretation for each context was discussed leading to a refinement of the items. Meeting participants from each country rated the importance of each item and offered suggestions on wording of the items to ensure they were capturing the relevant aspects of the different contexts and cultures.

Results of phase 1: Formative phase

A total of 42 focus groups (22 in Somalia and 20 in South Sudan) with a total of 215 participants (111 in Somalia and 104 in South Sudan) were conducted. The composition of the focus groups varied by stakeholders (e.g., religious leaders, service providers, teachers, police, youth, elders), age (under 30, 31–45, and 46+), marital status, and sex. Themes identified for social norms that are protective against GBV included parents teaching/guiding children, marriage, and respect for female members of the family. Themes identified as harmful social norms included men’s responsibility/right to correct female behavior and the social expectation that a woman will obey her husband and fulfill her gender prescribed duties to his satisfaction, protecting the family’s dignity by not reporting violence/assault to avoid stigma associated with being a victim, husband’s right to force his wife to have sex, lack of status for women, and forced marriage. Mothers, fathers, parents, community and religious leaders, and male relatives were seen as people that influenced behavior and protected women and girls from GBV. Men and women’s behavior also emerged as subthemes associated with harmful social norms, such as indecent dressing, being out in public alone, and drug/alcohol use. Stigma associated with being a GBV victim, blaming women and girls for the violence/assault, and the importance of family honor and respect were identified as norms that prevent victims and families from reporting sexual violence and other forms of GBV to authorities. Items for the new scale were written for each of the themes and sub-themes relevant to harmful social norms and after elimination of redundant items, 30 items remained and were presented to the in-country teams. After discussion about the focus group themes and the items with the in-country teams, a total of 18 items remained. The team then collaborated to develop introductory statements and response scales for each of two domains of the scale, personal beliefs and injunctive social norms. The final scale to be tested in the evaluation phase had two sets of the 18 items, one for each domain.

Methods for phase 2: Psychometric testing

At each of the three sites in the two countries detailed above, trained local research assistants (RAs) recruited and consented 200 community members (15 years and older) to complete the Social Norms and Beliefs about Gender Based Violence Scale. The sampling frame was stratified by age group (15–18, 19–24, 25–45, 46+ years) and sex with a target of 25 people per age group/sex combination. As suggested by the in-country teams, male RAs recruited and interviewed male community members and female RAs recruited and interviewed female community members. Each RA recruited participants across age groups. The RA started from a central point determined by the research coordinator each morning. The RA would contact every 3rd house/dwelling counting on both sides of the street/pathway. If nobody was home, the person was not willing to participate, or the person did not match the sampling target for sex/age, the RA went to the next house/dwelling. Once a RA identified and consented an eligible participant in the household and completed the scale, the RA started the process to identify the next eligible participant by going to the next 3rd house/dwelling on the street/pathway. Only one eligible household member completed the scale.

Field procedures

RAs received detailed training on protocols for maintaining participant confidentiality and safety as well as protocols designed to ensure safety and security for the team members. In the field, when a RA identified an adult at a house/dwelling, he/she introduced the study. If that person met the eligibility criteria and agreed to participate, the RA worked with the participant to find a private and comfortable place to provide informed consent and administer the scale. If that person did not meet eligibility, he/she was asked if there was someone living in the household that did meet the eligibility. The RA provided each potential participant with informed consent information using the script provided on the study tablet and approved by the in-country team and the Johns Hopkins Medical Institution Institutional Review Board (IRB). If the eligible participant provided verbal consent the RA continued and administered the scale with brief demographic questions, including marital status, employment, and children in the household. The responses were entered by the RA directly on the tablet. Once finished, the RA thanked the participant for their time and answered any questions prior to moving on.

The 18 items generated from the formative phase were asked in two sets to capture the two domains, personal beliefs and injunctive norms. The injunctive social norms items started with “How many of the people whose opinion matters most to you….” with the response scale of: 1 – None of them, 2 – A few of them, 3 – About half of them, 4 – Most of them, and 5 – All of them. The personal beliefs items started with “We would like to know if you think any of the following statements are wrong and should be changed in your community. We also would like to understand how ready or willing you are to take action by speaking out on the issues you think are wrong” and used the response scale: 1 – Agree with this statement, 2 – I am not sure if I agree or disagree with this statement, 3 – I disagree with the statement but am not ready to tell others, and 4 – I disagree with the statement and I am telling others that this is wrong. The scale was translated into Somali and the translation was reviewed by the Somalia team and revised before it was programmed into the study tablet. In South Sudan, the scale was administered in the Kakwa language in Yei and Dinka language in Warrap. As these are not commonly written languages in South Sudan, the team preferred using the English version of the scale programmed on the tablet and translated into the local language at time of administration. The South Sudan team training included discussions and decisions on correct translation of items in the two languages and then the team practiced administering with volunteers not participating in the study to ensure consistency in real-time translation across RAs and sites.

Psychometric analyses

For each of the two domains of the scale, we examined construct validity with factor analysis using the common factor model with oblique rotation. Factor loadings of .40 or above were considered as loading on a given factor [ 31 ]. Items that did not load on any factor were considered for revision or elimination from the scale. Reliability was estimated with Cronbach’s alpha for each factor subscale. Known groups validity was examined by testing two a priori hypotheses: H 1 : The sites (Somalia, Yei, South Sudan, and Warrup, South Sudan) differ on social norms and personal beliefs due to differences in the extent of GBV programming within the districts of Mogadishu and regions of South Sudan; and H 2 : Men and women participants will differ on social norms and personal beliefs related to GBV. The first hypothesis was tested with analysis of variance and the second with t-tests.

Results of psychometric testing

The team administered the Social Norms and Beliefs about GBV Scale to 602 community members across Mogadishu, Somalia and Yei and Warrup, South Sudan. The sampling frame was successfully implemented by the research team with 50.0% of participants across the settings being female and 50.0% male with an equal distribution across age groups except in Yei, South Sudan. The team in Yei reported having difficulty finding community members in the region over 60 years of age. The lack of older community members could be related to deaths in the Second Civil War from 1983 to 2005. Over half (58.6%) of the participants were married and had children in the home (67.4%). One third (34%) reported working outside the home, 10.1% were looking for work, 21.4% were students, 29.4% were housewives, and 4.7% were too old to work. Table  1 summarizes the characteristics of the participants by country and site.

Factor analysis

The factor analysis for the items in the injunctive norms domain of the scale was based on responses from participants that completed all items ( N  = 587, 97.5%). There were 3 of the 18 items on the injunctive social norms scales that did not load on any factor and were thus removed from the scale. The first item “expect daughters to be married before 15 years of age” likely did not correlate with the other items on the scale because early marriage is seen as a different concept than sexual violence. The second item “think that if an unmarried woman/girl is raped by a man, she should marry him rather than not being married at all” captures two different concepts—marrying the man who raped her and that being better than not being married at all. This complexity likely made the question difficult to answer. The third item “expect a woman not to report her husband for forcing her to have sexual intercourse” did not reflect a consistent social norm. Discussions with the in-country teams revealed that there was considerable debate on this item even among people who agreed on other items. Based on the eigenvalues (first 5 eigenvalues were 4.27, 1.82, 1.23, 0.94, 0.81), the remaining 15 items formed three factors (Table  2 presents the factor loadings for each item on each of the three factors) with each item loading above 0.40 on only one factor. The following titles were given to represent the three factors, later describes as subscales: “Response to Sexual Violence” has 5 items, “Protecting Family Honor” has 6 items, and “Husband’s Right to Use Violence” has 4 items. The “Response to Sexual Violence” and “Husbands’ Right to Use Violence” subscales had the highest inter-factor correlation (0.46) followed by “Response to Sexual Violence” and “Protecting Family Honor” (0.34), then “Protecting Family Honor” and “Husbands’ Right to Use Violence” (0.30). Importantly, these 3 factors were consistent with and reflected the themes identified from the qualitative analyses of the focus groups in Phase 1. A very similar factor structure was found for the personal beliefs domain ( N  = 588, 97.7%). Eigenvalues (first 5 eigenvalues were 4.46, 1.76, 1.46, 0.90, 0.88) suggested 3 factors as illustrated in Table  3 . All items loaded at 0.45 or greater on only one of the three factors. One item, “a woman/girl would be stigmatized if she were to report rape” loaded on the “Response to Sexual Violence” in the personal beliefs domain whereas the corresponding item, “women/girls fear stigma if they were to report sexual violence”, loaded on the “Protecting Family Honor” subscale for the social norms domain. The inter-factor correlations on the personal beliefs domain were also very similar to the injunctive social norms domain scale: “Response to Sexual Violence” and “Husbands’ Right to Use Violence” had the highest correlation (0.43) followed by “Response to Sexual Violence” and “Protecting Family Honor” (0.32), then “Protecting Family Honor” and “Husbands’ Right to Use Violence” (0.26).

Reliability

Cronbach alpha reliabilities, a measure of internal consistency of the scale, were in an acceptable range for all factors/subscales within each domain. Cronbach alphas ranged from 0.69 to 0.75 for the injunctive norms domain and 0.71 to 0.77 for the personal beliefs domain (the last row of Tables  2 and 3 present the Cronbach alphas for each scale).

Descriptive statistics

Scores for each of the factors (subscales) were computed by taking the average of the items within the subscales. The injunctive social norms domain subscales scores range from 1 to 5 with higher scores reflecting more negative responses to sexual violence and GBV, stronger support for social norms that prioritize protecting family honor by not reporting sexual violence or other forms of GBV, and stronger support for norms endorsing a husband’s right to use violence. Personal beliefs subscales can range from 1 to 4 with higher scores reflecting a more positive response to survivors of sexual violence, that protecting family honor and not reporting sexual violence is wrong, and that a husband should not have the right to use violence against his wife. The means, standard deviations, minimum, and maximum observed score for each of the subscales in each domain are presented in Table  4 . In general, the mean for the injunctive social norms subscales reflect participants’ views that “few to about half” of the people who are important/influential to them endorse harmful social norms about GBV with “Protecting Family Honor” being the strongest norm (means range from 2.00 to 2.77). The mean for the personal beliefs subscales reflects that participant beliefs range between “not being sure if they disagree” with the norms to “disagreeing but not being ready to speak out against them.” Specifically, participants’ beliefs ranged between not being sure if they disagree to disagreeing but not ready to speak out against protecting family honor (mean = 2.61) and husband’s right to use violence (mean = 2.90). Participants indicated that they were between disagreeing but not being ready to tell others to telling others that negative responses to sexual violence survivors are wrong (mean = 3.29). Cross domain correlations were − .318 (p < .001) for “Response to Sexual Violence”, −.512 (p < .001) for “Protecting Family Honor”, and − .427 (p < .001) for “Husband’s Right to Use Violence.”

Known groups validity

Analysis of variance with Bonferroni post-hoc tests revealed that the three sites differed significantly on all subscales for the injunctive social norms domain (i.e., “Response to Sexual Violence,” p < .001; “Protecting Family Honor,” p = .039; “Husband’s Right to Use Violence,” p < .001). Women and men participants in Yei, South Sudan, where there are few GBV programs and services, reported social norms that are significantly more accepting of sexual violence and other forms of GBV than Warrap, South Sudan and Mogadishu, Somalia. In terms of personal beliefs, women and men in Yei were also significantly less likely to speak out against harmful responses to sexual violence and other GBV (p < .001). In Mogadishu, Somalia, men and women were significantly less likely to speak out against “Protecting Family Honor” (p < .001) and “Husband’s Right to Use Violence” (p < .001) than the sites in South Sudan. Table  5 summarizes the t-test results examining differences in the subscales for both domains between men and women. Women participants had significantly higher scores on all of the subscales for the injunctive social norms, indicating women were more likely to endorse harmful norms related to “Response to Sexual Violence”, “Protecting Family Honor”, and “Husband’s Right to Use Violence” than men. Men and women did not differ on personal beliefs about “Response to Sexual Violence”, however, men reported that they are more ready to speak out against harmful social norms of “Protecting Family Honor” and “Husband’s Right to Use Violence” than women.

The psychometric properties of the Social Norms and Beliefs about GBV Scale (final scale is presented in Additional file  1 ) are strong. Each of the three subscales, “Response to Sexual Violence,” “Protecting Family Honor,” and “Husband’s Right to Use Violence” within the two domains of the scale illustrate good factor structure, acceptable internal consistency, reliability, and are supported by the significance of the hypothesized group differences. These three factors represent social norms that are known from previous research to maintain the high rates of GBV in many global settings [ 28 ]. The “Response to Sexual Violence” subscale captures the individual, family, and community response of blaming the victim for GBV. Most often a woman or girl is blamed for the sexual assault or other form of GBV and the family and larger community can respond with rejection and judgement of her behavior, which can result in the family not supporting or abandoning the victim. It reflects the acceptance of sexual violence and other forms of GBV as expected or even normal and that women and girls need to limit their movement and actions to prevent men from assaulting them, as men are not able to control their behavior if they are “tempted” by women. High scores on the injunctive norms domain of this subscale represent that the respondents believe that their influential others expect people to endorse victim blaming responses to sexual violence and other forms of GBV. The “Protecting Family Honor” subscale identifies the stigma associated with being a member of a family/clan where a women/girl experiences GBV and the importance placed on addressing the violence within the family/clan rather than reporting it to authorities. The priority is to protect the family and victim’s reputations rather than the safety and well-being of the woman or girl. High scores on the injunctive domain of this subscale represent that the respondent believes their influential other expects people to prioritize protecting family honor over safety and well-being of victims. The “Husband’s Right to Use Violence” subscale reflects social norms that support a husband’s use of violence to discipline his wife and to have sex with her even when she does not want to. It also reflects a norm that associates a man’s use of violence against his wife with illustrating his love for her. High scores on the injunctive norms domain for this subscale indicates that the respondents believe their influential others expect people to endorse a husband’s right to use violence against his wife. High scores on the personal beliefs domains for each of the subscales reflect a greater willingness to speak out against social norms that endorse GBV.

Validity of the injunctive norms subscales was supported by significant relationships with other variables (i.e., site and sex) as hypothesized during the development of the scale. The three sites were significantly different on the injunctive norms domain of the scale. Although all three sites experienced a high degree of conflict, the amount of humanitarian services to support GBV survivors and programming to raise awareness and change harmful social norms towards GBV varied. Mogadishu districts participating in the study had relatively active programming, with Warrap and Yei reporting few international and local NGOs with capacity to provide diverse GBV services and programs. Yei, South Sudan was found to have significantly stronger norms that endorse negative “Response to Sexual Violence” and other forms of GBV than other sites. The beliefs of participants from Yei also indicated less support for changing harmful social norms about GBV than other sites in the study. Participants in the four districts of Mogadishu scored the lowest on the personal beliefs subscales of “Husband’s Right to Use Violence” and “Protecting Family Honor.” This finding indicates that participants were less willing to speak out against social norms that support husbands’ rights to use violence against their wives or norms that support not reporting sexual violence to protect family honor than the South Sudan sites. Important to interpreting the findings are the differences in context, culture, and religion across the sites which inform social norms and personal beliefs.

Generalizability is one of the indicators of trustworthiness of the Social Norms and Beliefs about GBV scale  – the ability to interpret and apply the scale in a broader context to make it relevant and meaningful to GBV prevention programs being implemented and evaluated in diverse low-resource and humanitarian settings. Importantly, the 36-item two domain scaled applied with community members by local teams in diverse districts and regions within Somalia and South Sudan resulted in a valid and reliable 30-item scale to measure personal beliefs and injunctive social norms. The psychometric phase included randomly selected women and men across multiple age groups (15 years and older), living in both urban and rural communities, and included community members living in settlements and camps for displaced persons. Thus, the scale has the potential to be used in not only humanitarian settings, but also GBV prevention programs in other low-resource and fragile settings.

Although this psychometric evaluation has several strengths, including a mixed methods design to develop the scale and a large sample size to test the scale across diverse sites, it has limitations. The study does not include a separate validation sample to conduct a confirmatory factor analysis. Further, we did not test the relationship between the Social Norms and Beliefs about GBV Scale and community members’ reports on experience, perpetration, or witnessing of GBV in the participating communities. The research team decided in collaboration with local partners not to ask participants in the evaluation phase about personal experiences with GBV for either the scale development or testing. The local colleagues felt community members would be more comfortable and likely to participate in the scale development and testing if they were not asked about their own experiences and thus also increasing generalizability.

The study presents a mixed methods approach to developing a brief scale with strong psychometric properties to measure change in harmful social norms associated with GBV. The Social Norms and Beliefs About GBV Scale is a 30-item scale with three subscales, “Response to Sexual Violence,” “Protecting Family Honor,” and “Husband’s Right to Use Violence” in each of the two domains, personal beliefs and injunctive social norms. The scale to our knowledge is one of the first to demonstrate good factor structure, acceptable internal consistency, and reliability, and be supported by the significance of the hypothesized group differences by setting and sex. We encourage and recommend that researchers apply the Social Norms and Beliefs about GBV Scale in different humanitarian and global LMIC settings and collect parallel data on a range of GBV outcomes. This will allow us to further validate the scale by triangulating its findings with GBV experiences and perpetration and assess its generalizability across diverse settings.

Abbreviations

Demographic and Health Surveys

Democratic Republic of Congo

• Gender-based violence

Inter-Agency Standing Committee

Internally displaced persons

Intimate partner violence

Institutional Review Board

Low and middle-income countries

Non-partner violence

Research assistant

United Nations Children’s Fund

Decker MR, Latimore AD, Yasutake S, Haviland M, Ahmed S, Blum RW, et al. Gender-based violence against adolescent and young adult women in low- and middle-income countries. J Adolesc Health. 2015;56(2):188–96.

Article   Google Scholar  

Devries KM, Mak JY, Garcia-Moreno C, Petzold M, Child JC, Falder G, et al. Global health. The global prevalence of intimate partner violence against women. Science. 2013;340(6140):1527–8.

Article   CAS   Google Scholar  

Watts C, Zimmerman C. Violence against women: global scope and magnitude. Lancet. 2002;359(9313):1232–7.

Garcia-Moreno C, Jansen HA, Ellsberg M, Heise L, Watts CH, WHOM-cSoWs H, et al. Prevalence of intimate partner violence: findings from the WHO multi-country study on women's health and domestic violence. Lancet. 2006;368(9543):1260–9.

Vu A, Adam A, Wirtz A, Pham K, Rubenstein L, Glass N, et al. The prevalence of sexual violence among female refugees in complex humanitarian emergencies: a systematic review and meta-analysis. PLoS Curr. 2014;6.

Wirtz AL, Pham K, Glass N, Loochkartt S, Kidane T, Cuspoca D, et al. Gender-based violence in conflict and displacement: qualitative findings from displaced women in Colombia. Confl Health. 2014;8:10.

Sloand E, Killion C, Gary FA, Dennis B, Glass N, Hassan M, et al. Barriers and facilitators to engaging communities in gender-based violence prevention following a natural disaster. J Health Care Poor Underserved. 2015;26(4):1377–90.

IASC. Guidelines for Integrating Gender-based Violence Interventions in Humanitarian Action. Reducing risk. In: Promoting resilience and aiding recovery Geneva: inter-agency standing committee; 2015.

Google Scholar  

Vu A, Adam A, Wirtz AL, Pham K, Rubenstein LS, Glass N, et al. The prevalence of sexual violence among female refugees in complex humanitarian emergencies: a systematic review and meta-analysis. PLOS Currents: Disasters. 2014.

McCleary-Sills J, Namy S, Nyoni J, Rweyemamu D, Salvatory A, Steven E. Stigma, shame and women's limited agency in help-seeking for intimate partner violence. Glob Public Health. 2016;11(1–2):224–35.

Stark L, Warner A, Lehmann H, Boothby N, Ager A. Measuring the incidence and reporting of violence against women and girls in Liberia using the 'neighborhood method. Confl Health. 2013;7(1):20.

Wirtz AL, Glass N, Pham K, Aberra A, Rubenstein LS, Singh S, et al. Development of a screening tool to identify female survivors of gender-based violence in a humanitarian setting: qualitative evidence from research among refugees in Ethiopia. Confl Health. 2013;7(1):13.

Wirtz AL, Glass N, Pham K, Perrin N, Rubenstein LS, Singh S, et al. Comprehensive development and testing of the ASIST-GBV, a screening tool for responding to gender-based violence among women in humanitarian settings. Confl Health. 2016;10:7.

Heise L. What Works to Prevent Partner Violence? An Evidence Overview: Working Paper. London: STRIVE Research Consortium,London School of Hygiene and Tropical. Medicine. 2011.

Read-Hamilton S, Marsh M. The communities care programme: changing social norms to end violence against women and girls in conflict-affected communities. Gend Dev. 2016;24(2):261–76.

Glass N, Perrin N, Clough A, Desgroppes A, Kaburu FN, Melton J, et al. Evaluating the communities care program: best practice for rigorous research to evaluate gender based violence prevention and response programs in humanitarian settings. Confl Health. 2018;12:5.

Berkowitz AD. An Overview of the Social Norms Approach. Changing the Culture of College Drinking: A Socially Situated Health Communication Campaign: Hampton Press; 2005. p. 303.

Bicchieri C. The grammar of society : the nature and dynamics of social norms. New York: Cambridge University Press; 2006.

Mackie G, Moneti F, Shakya H, Denny E. What are social norms? How are they measured? New York: UNICEF/UCSD Center on Global Justice; 2015 July 27.

Alexander-Scott M. Emily bell,, Holden J. DFID Guidence note: shifting social norms to tackle violence against women and girls. London: DFID Violence Against Women Helpdesk; 2016.

UNICEF. Communities care: transforming lives and preventing violence toolkit. New York: UNICEF; 2014.

Barker G, Nascimento M, Segundo M, Pulerwitz J. How do we know if men have changed? Promoting and measuring attitude change with young men: lessons from program H in Latin America. In: Ruxton S, editor. Gender equality and men: learning from practice. Oxfam, UK: Oxford; 2004. p. 147–61.

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Leon F, Foreit J. Developing women’s empowerment scales and predicting contraceptive use: A study of 12 countries’ demographic and health surveys (DHS) data. Draft manuscript ed2009.

Schuler SR, Islam F. Women's acceptance of intimate partner violence within marriage in rural Bangladesh. Stud Fam Plan. 2008;39(1):49–58.

Schuler SR, Lenzi R, Yount KM. Justification of intimate partner violence in rural Bangladesh: what survey questions fail to capture. Stud Fam Plan. 2011;42(1):21–8.

Tsai AC, Kakuhikire B, Perkins JM, Vorechovska D, McDonough AQ, Ogburn EL, et al. Measuring personal beliefs and perceived norms about intimate partner violence: population-based survey experiment in rural Uganda. PLoS Med. 2017;14(5).

Cohen J. Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences. 2nd ed. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates; 1988.

World Health Organization. Changing cultural and social norms that support violence. Geneva, Switzerland: WHO; 2009.

Adjei SB. “Correcting an erring wife is Normal”: moral discourses of spousal violence in Ghana. Journal of Interpersonal Violence. 2015;33(12):1871–92.

Tchokossa AM, Golfa T, Salau OR, Ogunfowokan AA. Perceptions and experiences of intimate partner violence among women in Ile-Ife Osun state Nigeria. Int J Caring Sci. 2018:267–78.

Costello AB, Osborne J. Best practices in exploratory factor analysis: four recommendations for getting the Most from your analysis. Pract Assess Res Eval. 2005;10(7):1–9.

Download references

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge our committed and talented implementing partners in South Sudan, two national NGOs, Voice for Change in Central Equatoria State and The Organization for Children Harmony in Warrup State. In Somalia, the Italian NGO, Comitato Internazionale per LoSviluppo dei Popoli (CISP) Mogadishu and other regions of the country.

United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) provided the funding for the Communities Care program.

Availability of data and materials

The Communities Care program toolkit is available through United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Requests for research data and materials can be obtained by contacting UNICEF.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, 525 North Wolfe Street, Baltimore, MD, 21205, USA

Nancy Perrin, Amber Clough, Rachael Turner, Lori Heise & Nancy Glass

UNICEF, New York, NY, USA

Mendy Marsh

Comitato Internazionale per lo Sviluppo dei Popoli (CISP) Somalia, Nairobi, Kenya

Amelie Desgroppes, Ali Abdi & Francesco Kaburu

Voice For Change, Yei, South Sudan

Clement Yope Phanuel

Norwegian Church Aid, Oslo, Norway

Silje Heitmann

UNICEF, Geneva, Switzerland

Masumi Yamashina

UNICEF Somalia, Mogadishu, Somalia

Brendan Ross

Consultant, Gender based violence in Emergencies, Sydney, Australia

Sophie Read-Hamilton

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, USA

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

NP, NG, MM, AC, SRH, SH, FK, AD, MY designed the study. MM, SRH, NP, RT, LH, NG and AC identified the theoretical framework for the formative and psychometric phases of the study. NG, NP, and LH conducted the psychometric analysis. MY, CYP, AA, AC, NP and NG implemented and interpretation the study findings in South Sudan and SH, BR, AD, AA, FK, AC, NG and NP implemented and interpretation of the study findings in Somalia. NP, NG, RT, AC and LH finalized the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nancy Glass .

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate.

The appropriate federal and state government ministry in each of Somalia and South Sudan and the Johns Hopkins Medical Institution Institutional Review Board (IRB) approved the study protocol and oral consent. The government ministry provided a letter of approval to Johns Hopkins and the local implementing partners to use as they reached out to authorities and key stakeholders to implement the research in each participating community.

Consent for publication

The authors of the manuscript provide consent for the publication.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Additional file

Additional file 1:.

Social Norms and Beliefs about Gender Based Violence Scale. (DOCX 17 kb)

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Perrin, N., Marsh, M., Clough, A. et al. Social norms and beliefs about gender based violence scale: a measure for use with gender based violence prevention programs in low-resource and humanitarian settings. Confl Health 13 , 6 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13031-019-0189-x

Download citation

Received : 07 September 2018

Accepted : 20 February 2019

Published : 08 March 2019

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s13031-019-0189-x

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Global health
• Humanitarian
• Social norms

Conflict and Health

ISSN: 1752-1505

• Submission enquiries: [email protected]

• University of Michigan Library
• Research Guides

Sexual and Gender Based Violence

• Research & Information Sources
• Data & Data Visualization
• Policy Sources
• Current Awareness
• Tools and Toolkits
• Learning Resources
• Electronic Books
• Organizations & Initiatives
• Global Sexual & Reproductive Health This link opens in a new window
• Sexual and Gender Minority Health This link opens in a new window

Informationist

Scholarly Databases

• PubMed @ UM

Information Sources

• MDHHS | Injury & Violence Prevention
• CDC | Violence Prevention
• WHO VIOLENCE INFO
• UN Women | Accelerating efforts to tackle online and technology-facilitated violence against women and girls | 2022
• UN Women | RESPECT women framework: preventing violence against women
• UNFPA | Technology-facilitated Gender-based Violence: Making All Spaces Safe 01 Dec 2021
• Women's Refugee Commission | Sexual and Gender based violence
• Women Deliver Publications | Gender Based Violence
• International Center for Research on Women | Violence
• dr. Denis Mukwege Foundation | Guidebook on State Obligations for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence

New in PubMed

Social Action Research to Make a Difference

We provide a collaborative, multi-disciplinary vehicle for Michigan State University faculty, staff and students to use social action research to influence local, state, national and international practice and policy related to gender-based violence.

What's New?

Rcgv community board.

Featured Projects

RCGV members engage in research, outreach and teaching dedicated to ending gender-based violence and supporting survivors.  See below for a sample of work by RCGV Members.

The Michigan Victim Advocacy Network (MiVAN)

Safety and Housing Stability for Domestic Violence Survivors

A large, longitudinal evaluation of the impact of Domestic Violence Housing First (DVHF) model on the safety, housing stability and well-being of domestic violence survivors and their children.

Untested Sexual Assault Kits

A team of Michigan State University psychologists, led by Professor Rebecca Campbell and Assistant Professor Katie Gregory, recently concluded a major three-year study looking at the victim notification process for Detroit’s untested sexual assault kit survivors on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women.

The Impact of Coerced Debt on Domestic Violence Survivors

This study examines the frequency, nature, and effects of coerced debt, defined as non-consensual, credit-related transactions that occur in intimate relationships where one partner uses coercive control to dominate the other. It supports the need for policy reform and victim services aimed at addressing coerced debt, thereby mitigating a potentially significant economic barrier to safety.

Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners (SANEs)

The Michigan State University College of Nursing had been awarded funding from the Health Resource and Services Administration (HRSA) to support education and certification of nurses interested in becoming Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners (SANEs) in Michigan. 

• Privacy Policy
• Products & Tools
• Prospective Students
• Survivor Resources

Copyright @ RCGV. 2023. All Rights Reserved.

Advertisement

Survivor-Centered Research: Towards an Intersectional Gender-Based Violence Movement

• Original Article
• Published: 07 September 2018
• Volume 33 , pages 559–562, ( 2018 )

Cite this article

• Alicia Gill   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1094-8543 1  

5636 Accesses

23 Citations

6 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

Much has been written on the imperative of intersectionality within the fight for women’s equality and in efforts to end gender-based violence. However, data continues to show that women and LGBTQ people of color experience heightened and more severe instances of both state and interpersonal violence. What lessons can domestic violence and sexual assault advocates and researchers learn from intersectional theory and frameworks to help reduce instances of violence, reduce barriers in accessing resources and create safety nets for communities? This paper seeks to explore the roots of historical violence against communities of color, the current trends in anti-violence research and service provision and strategies for engaging in intersectional community based research.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Subscribe and save.

• Get 10 units per month
• Download Article/Chapter or eBook
• 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
• Cancel anytime

Price includes VAT (Russian Federation)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Rent this article via DeepDyve

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Reaching a Fuller Picture of the Perceived “Need” of Police and Contexts Surrounding Women’s Formal Reporting for Intimate Partner Violence

Lessons Learned: One Researcher’s Same-Sex IPV Journey

Intersectional Trauma-Informed Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) Services: Narrowing the Gap between IPV Service Delivery and Survivor Needs

Explore related subjects.

• Artificial Intelligence

Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review, 43 (6), 1241.

Article   Google Scholar  

Felitti, V., Anda, R., Nordenberg, D., Williamson, D., Spitz, A.M., Edwards, V., … Marks, JS. (1998). Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults: The adverse childhood experiences (ACE) study. American Journal of Preventative Medicine, 14 (4), 245–258. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0749-3797(98)00017-8 .

Article   CAS   Google Scholar  

Jones, F. (2014). Why black women struggle more with domestic violence. Retrieved 25 July 2017 from http://time.com/3313343/ray-rice-black-women-domestic-violence/ .

Larkin, V, Renzetti, C. (2009). Economic stress and domestic violence. retrieved From https://vawnet.org/material/economic-stress-and-domestic-violence . Accessed June, 2018.

Librescro, L. (2015). Being Arrested Is Nearly Twice As Deadly For African-Americans As Whites. Retrieved 17 April 2017 from https://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/being-arrested-is-nearly-twice-as-deadly-for-africanamericans-as-whites/ .

Lindauer, R. J. L. (2002). Post Traumatic Stress Disorder [letter]. The New England journal of medicine, 346 (19), 1496.

Google Scholar  

Petrosky, E., Blair, J. M., Betz, C. J., Fowler, K. A., Jack, S. P., & Lyons, B. H. (2017). Racial and ethnic differences in homicides of adult women and the role of intimate partner violence — United States, 2003–2014. MMWR Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 66 , 741–746. https://doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6628a1 .

Article   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Sherman, F. (2017). Unintended consequences: addressing the impact of domestic violence mandatory and pro-arrest policies and practices on girls and young women. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) National Girls Inititative.

Tannura, T. A. (2014). Rape Trauma Syndrome. American Journal of Sexuality Education, 9 (2), 247–256. https://doi.org/10.1080/15546128.2014.883267 .

Walker, L. (1989). Psychology and violence against women. American Psychologist, 44 (4), 695–702.

Williams, D. R., & Mohammed, S. A. (2009). Discrimination and racial disparities in health: evidence and needed research. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 32 , 20–47.

Download references

Acknowledgement

Special thanks to Dr. Nkiru Nnawulezi for support in the preparation of this manuscript.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Research and Program Evaluation, YWCA, 1020, 19th Street NW, Suite 750, Washington, DC, 20036, USA

Alicia Gill

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alicia Gill .

Additional information

This manuscript is intended to reflect the views of the author and not YWCA, USA.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Gill, A. Survivor-Centered Research: Towards an Intersectional Gender-Based Violence Movement. J Fam Viol 33 , 559–562 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-018-9993-0

Download citation

Published : 07 September 2018

Issue Date : November 2018

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-018-9993-0

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Intersectionality
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List

Perceptions and Experiences of Research Participants on Gender-Based Violence Community Based Survey: Implications for Ethical Guidelines

Yandisa sikweyiya.

1 Gender and Health Research Unit, South African Medical Research Council, Pretoria, South Africa

Rachel Jewkes

2 School of Public Health, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Conceived and designed the experiments: YS RJ. Performed the experiments: YS. Analyzed the data: YS RJ. Wrote the paper: YS RJ.

To explore how survey respondents perceived their experiences and the impact of participating in a survey, and to assess adverse consequences resulting from participation.

Qualitative study involving purposefully selected participants who had participated in a household-based survey.

This qualitative study was nested within a survey that investigated the prevalence of gender-based violence perpetration and victimization with adult men and women in South Africa. 13 male- and 10 female-in-depth interviews were conducted with survey respondents.

A majority of informants, without gender-differences, perceived the survey interview as a rare opportunity to share their adverse and or personal experiences in a 'safe' space. Gender-differences were noted in reporting perceptions of risks involved with survey participation. Some women remained fearful after completing the survey, that should breach of confidentiality or full survey content disclosure occur, they may be victimized by partners as a punishment for survey participation without men's approval. A number of informants generally discussed their survey participation with others. However, among women with interpersonal violence history or currently in abusive relationships, full survey content disclosure was done with fear; the partner responses were negative, and few women reported receiving threatening remarks but none reported being assaulted. In contrast no man reported adverse reaction by others. Informants with major life adversities reported that the survey had made them to relive the experiences causing them sadness and pain at the time. No informant perceived the survey as emotionally harmful or needed professional support because of survey questions. Rather the vast majority perceived benefit from survey participation.

Whilst no informant felt answering the survey questions had caused them emotional or physical harm, some were distressed and anxious, albeit temporarily. Research protocols need to put in place safeguards where appropriate so that this group receives support and protection.

Introduction

In the past few decades, worldwide, there has been an increase in research on interpersonal violence and trauma histories [1] , [2] . With this increase, institutional review boards (IRBs) and researchers have raised ethical concerns about the studies [3] , [4] , in particular the potential negative impact (emotional reaction and distress) they may have on research participants [2] , [5] . This concern has prompted some researchers to shift their attention towards empirically studying the impact of such research on participants [3] , [4] , [6] .

At present, not much is known about how participants perceive being asked about interpersonal violence and trauma histories [7] , [8] , [9] . There has been little research on this area [1] , [5] . Thus, distress and emotional harm of participants due to their participation in research remain a concern for all involved in research [8] .

We have an obligation to both the field of research on violence against women, and in particular to the participants, to understand how being asked about their adverse experiences impact them [9] . Yet, the lack of data creates a major gap [10] . Very little is known about either adverse consequences or benefits derived by participants who have violence or trauma histories when participating in research that asks about such histories [4] , [11] .

Some authors argue that this leaves IRBs to make judgments about risks of research participation based on personal experiences, conjunctive assumptions and guesses, rather than on empirical evidence [4] , [5] , [7] , [11] , [12] . Researchers and IRBs have an important responsibility in ensuring that harm to research participants is minimized, while benefits are maximized [9] , [11] . In order to carry out this task, researchers and IRBs need to, primarily, encourage and engage with research to better understand how participants themselves perceive risks and benefits in participating in research [5] , [10] , [11] , [12] . Evidence from such studies can guide IRBs and researchers in making decisions about risk-benefit ratio of research proposals that aim to study interpersonal violence and other sensitive topics [3] , [5] , [7] , [11] , [12] .

Whilst not much research has been done in this area, recent empirical evidence suggest that research participation for interpersonal violence and trauma survivors does not overwhelmingly distress participants, rather, participants report experiencing such research as beneficial [5] , [6] , [13] . This finding is consistent with findings from other studies which report that research participants, in particular those who have reported experiencing interpersonal violence and other traumas, seem to benefit from participating in research [1] , [3] , [6] , [7] .

This, however, does mean research participants do not get upset or distressed when asked sensitive questions or about their trauma histories [2] , [12] . Yet, literature shows that a low percentage of participants report being distressed and or upset by research participation, and the negative effects, such as feeling distressed or upset, seem to be time limited and not overwhelming [2] , [11] . Several studies report around 10% [3] of participants reporting some form of distress as a result of participation in research on interpersonal violence and other traumatic histories, but a few studies have reported higher percentages. For example, Johnson and Benight [6] enrolled 55 women (aged 18–65) currently recovering from domestic violence and recruited from domestic violence (DV) shelters, DV support groups, and other centers servicing abused women. They reported that 25% of participants reported being upset by research participation. Interpreting these statistics is complex as the distress of research participation may also be accompanied by a perception of benefit. Thus evidence suggests that most participants value being asked about violence and trauma histories in research and report that they would be willing to participate in such studies in future [2] , [3] , [5] .

Purpose of the Study

This study aimed to explore how participants perceived their experiences with a community-based survey of men and women (over 18 years) on prevalence of gender-based violence victimization and perpetration in the Gauteng province of South Africa. We wanted to understand participants’ perception on how the survey impacted them, how answering the survey questions had made them feel, and to establish whether they perceived the survey as distressing or helpful. We also wanted to understand if they had experienced any adverse consequences resulting from their participation in the survey.

The interviews were conducted 4 to 12 weeks (July-September 2010) after the main survey was administered. The survey questionnaires for men and women slightly differed in particular on phrasing questions on gender-based violence experiences. The questionnaire included items on socio-demographic characteristics, dimensions of adversity or trauma in childhood (emotional neglect and abuse, physical hardship and abuse; sexual abuse). There were questions on gender relations, control by the male partner in the relationship, sexual harassment, sexual relations and about witnessing domestic violence. Men were asked about the first time they ever raped, rape in the past year, whether they had ever raped a woman with peers, and attempted rape. Men were also asked about being victims of sexual coercion by other men. Women were asked about being victims of rape, relationship with the rape perpetrator, their age when it happened, where it happened, and whether the incident was reported to police. Men and women were asked questions on emotional, physical and sexual intimate partner violence perpetration (men) and victimization (women) [see 14] .

In the year 2010 a South African Non-Governmental Organization called GenderLinks (GL) collaborating with the South African Medical Research Council and the University of the Witwatersrand undertook a community-based survey to study the prevalence of gender-based violence in the Gauteng province of South Africa. The survey collected data in face to face interviews with a fieldworker using a structured questionnaire with women and men over the age 18 in 75 randomly sampled enumeration (EA’s) areas in the province.

For the qualitative study, from the 75 EA’s, we conveniently selected two EA’s that were closest to the South African Medical Research Council offices (place of work for both authors). Thus, the qualitative research was conducted in Soshanguve Township in the Gauteng Province, South Africa using multiple methods of data collection. Specifically, the qualitative study was conducted in the Thate Block and Siyakhula Extension (pseudonyms).

The Thate Block is predominantly a low-income area with few middle class families. Siyakhula Extension is relatively a new residential area which has originally been a squatter camp. It is mainly a poor area with some households being shack dwellings built of corrugated iron. These two sections (blocks) are approximately 4–6 kilometers apart.

Prior to conducting the qualitative in-depth interviews, YS (first author) had rented a room in the Thate Block and stayed fulltime for approximately 03 months (March to May in 2010) as an overt researcher. During this period he familiarized himself with the setting (both EA’s), collected general information on the community in order to be able to describe the context fully, mingled with the people and had unstructured conversations with the community members (not survey participants), learning as well their thoughts and feelings about research and their experiences of participating in research studies.

Ethical Considerations

Ethics approval was provided by the ethics committees of the South African Medical Research Council and the University of the Witwatersrand. The purpose of the study, risks and benefits, informants’ rights, and the procedures involved in the study were explained to the informants. All informants signed an informed consent form. No incentive was given to the informants to participate in this research and we are not aware of any research adverse event having occurred during the period of data collection. In an attempt to ensure confidentiality and anonymity of the data presented in this article, names of all the informants have been changed, and the names presented in this article are all pseudonyms. We have also changed the names of the two EAs we conducted the study in. Furthermore, we are confident that the little description of the two EAs we provided above can not identify these EAs as Soshanguve Township is very large with many sections that are very similar in characteristics to the two EAs above.

Materials and Methods

The article is based on 22 in-depth interviews, 12 conducted with men and 10 with women. The GL survey, to which this qualitative study was nested, randomly selected 20 households per EA for interview. One eligible men or female was systematically selected from those who slept four nights a week or more in the household and in total 511 women and 487 men participated in the survey [14] . The GL fieldworkers managed to interview 12 men in the Thathe Block and 12 women in Siyakhula Extension. Before the commencement of survey in these two EAs, YS requested the fieldworkers to invite the survey participants for the qualitative study and all 24 participants agreed to be contacted. They were initially contacted telephonically and thereafter met face to face for interviews. 11 men were interviewed by YS and 10 females were interviewed by a female researcher. Two females and one man could not be located for interview after several attempts. One man was interviewed twice after he requested another interview as he felt he had been dishonest in the first interview. (see Table 1 for informants’ background information). Interviews with men were conducted in isiZulu and those with women were a mixture of Zulu and seTswana. All interviews used a thematic guide and we audio-recorded the interviews. The guide for qualitative in-depth interviews with men was slightly different from that with women interviews. Informants were asked how the survey had impacted them, how answering the sensitive questions had made them feel, whether the research, directly or indirectly, was harmful or helpful to them and how, and whether they experienced adverse consequences as a result of their participation in the survey. In the qualitative in-depth interviews, informants were also asked to give life histories of violence, men were asked about violence perpetration and victimization and women victimization.

Data Analysis

A grounded theory analysis was employed to analyze the data [15] , [16] , [17] . Data were analysed inductively. Initial analysis was performed by both authors separately and it included data from 23 in-depth interviews [17] . All interviews were digitally recorded. Audio-tapes were transcribed verbatim and translated to English by the first author and for the seTswana audio-tapes, we hired a seTswana speaking person to translate and transcribe the interviews. All transcripts were anonymysed and prepared for data analysis by the first author.

Initial codes generally corresponded with themes as set out in the interview guide. We went into the data and extracted relevant text and we grouped similar text under a theme that seemed to represent that particular text [17] . We then ran through the data identifying open codes. We did this by breaking the sentences into small segments identifying several codes within the same sentence [17] . At this early stage, we attempted to move up from the informants’ words and were abstract in labeling the codes [18] . We maintained consistency in labeling the codes so that it would be possible, at the end, to group similar codes together and produce categories [16] . At this stage, we came together and compared and discussed the codes until we agreed on which codes seemed to fit together to form categories [17] . We then followed the advice of Dahlgren et al. [16] and constructed concepts and the theory by finding axes between the codes and categories and thereafter identified the main category. We then explored what these data mean and interpreted them. In this last stage of the analysis, we compared the findings with the existing literature and made conclusions [16] , [17] , [19] .

We present the findings by building a comparative argument through juxtaposing narratives of male and female informants, highlighting similarities and differences in their perceptions and experiences [17] of participating in the survey.

Many informants in this study reported to have appreciated the opportunity to participate in the survey. Some mentioned that the research afforded them an opportunity to talk about issues they don’t normally talk about. For example, Mapaseka (age 64) was raped when she was a teenager and got pregnant. She reported that at her home her grandmother and mother did not want to talk about her rape experience. As such she had kept it inside her and this affected her life tremendously. The survey interview provided her a rare opportunity to talk about the rape incident and this healed her somewhat. She explained:

Because as mothers, us mothers who are aged 64 we have met with many troubles in our lives. And you know when a person come from afar and she does not know you and she asked what are the things that you have experienced. I told her things and I felt pain as I was telling her and she was listening to what I was saying. My heart was sore but I told myself I have to talk about this, I have to talk about it so that it can come out of my soul (kumele ngiyikhulume ukuze iphume la emphefumlweni wami) because it caused me so much pain.

Other informants who had traumatic or life threatening experiences like Mapaseka, they too, reported that through the survey, they had an uncommon opportunity to talk. Nonhlanhla, a widow with five children who was HIV positive and had reported a history of being in abusive intimate relationships in her adult life, mentioned that she found the survey content to be relevant to her and saw it as an unusual opportunity to talk about her HIV status something she did not do often. A male informant Kelebogile, in his early 40’s, had a similar perception; he was HIV+ and reported that the survey interview had provided him a rare opportunity to talk about his HIV status in a space he perceived as safe.

Attitudes, Perpetration, and Experiences of Gender-based Violence

The majority of women had an understanding that partner abuse comprised only physical and sexual abuse using physical force. For example, Mirriam reported that she had a boyfriend and perceived him as a good man who never gives her trouble. Yet when she was asked later in the interview “ How is your life with him? ”, she said: “ A lot of the time we fight, but not physically”. Similarly, Mathapelo maintained in the interviews she had a non-abusive marriage, yet she later reported that her husband sometimes used non-aggressive methods of coercing her into sex, such as persistent pleading, subtle threats, accusations of infidelity and emotional blackmail; even though she had told him she was tired and did not want to have sex at the time. She explained:

…no, he does not force me with his hands (to have sex). He’ll say things like, “…just once…” things like that… The thing is he’s the type of person who wants something like it’s been forever and I don’t like being rushed and I don’t like being forced into something that I don’t want…for instance he sometimes come home and he wants to have sex and when you’re tired, you’re tired - he shouldn’t force you, shout at you, accuse you of sleeping around.

Other women reported in the interviews to be in abusive relationships or marriages or had had experienced partner abuse in their lives. Mapaseka had been raped when she was 19 years old by a man she knew from her community. Margaret reported that her husband often beat her. Nonhlanhla had also been in abusive relationships including in her marriage.

Seven men had fairly gender-equitable attitudes and views. In their narratives, they expressed disagreement with beating women, did not approve of it and expressed concern that it was very common in their community. Yet, Thabo a young man in mid 20’s clearly had gender inequitable views, attitudes and practices. In his interview he mentioned beating her girlfriend and felt justified beating her as she had cheated on him.

Uhm the thing is she had made me angry you see? She had made me angry and I beat her. But it was not that kind of beating as if I’m mad, I beat her up in a good way (ngamshaya kahle nje)…Uhm just slapping her, something like that. But I would not take a stone and beat her with it. I just slap her, you see? I’m just putting discipline in her (ngifaka icontrol kuphela) (laughing)… Ooh she was cheating, yes she was cheating.

Concerns and Feelings About the Survey Process

In the interviews we asked the informants what their concerns and feelings were about the survey process; if there were any consequences, violence, distress and intimidation they experienced resulting from survey participation.

Data suggest that some women were left with fear post survey. They reported to have had fears that should their identities and information be disclosed, they may suffer violent reprisal from their partners.

In contrast men did not report this fear. Yet, they had felt that some questions were somewhat shocking to them, but not unusually invasive, and had understood why they were asked. Notwithstanding, five men reported that there were questions which had caused them conspicuous discomfort, although they had answered them. They viewed the questions as sensitive and personal. For them it was taboo to be asked about sex, condoms, HIV, intimate relationships and partner abuse. And some had feared negative ramifications that could potentially result from their disclosures. Our analysis reveals these men perceived such questions negatively because they were not used to being asked such questions.

Resulting from this discomfort, Thabo lied in the survey and reported that he had never beaten a partner whilst he had. He explained:

He asked whether “have I ever beaten a girl?” I told him “no” whilst I know that I have beaten a girl …eish I thought of many things, I thought of police, eish I really thought of many things (ngicabange izinto eziningi mfethu) my friend (laughing).

Other men reported that their discomfort was brought about by their fear of being judged or labeled negatively by the researcher because of their disclosures. For example, Kelebogile and Sipho reported discomfort in disclosing their HIV status in the survey, as such, the latter reported in our interviews to have been dishonest in answering the questions on HIV testing and status. Sipho explained:

Yes I did not tell him much, even with him I concealed a lot from him that I have AIDS; I don’t think I told him that. I did not tell him… I can’t really remember. But I think the thing that I did not tell him was that I have AIDS, no I did not tell him.

Disclosure of Research Participation

A number of informants discussed their participation in the survey or were known by others (e.g. children, boyfriends, girlfriends, mothers and husbands and wives) to have participated in the survey. However, our data suggest that disclosure was done with fear by some women. Some women reported that they did not disclose much content of the survey; they had chosen to conceal particular information. It seems this was for different reasons. One informant Thandaza who described her marriage as non-abusive said that she did not see a need to tell her husband as the interview was about her. However, Margaret who reported to be in an abusive marriage and often beaten by her husband, reported that she did not disclose some particulars about the survey because she feared her husband would beat her. She explained:

I can tell him (my husband) but there are things I’ll tell him and other things that I won’t.

Interviewer. Why are there things that you won’t tell him?

Margaret: I couldn’t because he would hit me.

Mirriam, a young unmarried woman currently in an abusive relationship, told her boyfriend about the full content of the interview and she felt threatened by the remarks he made. She posited:

I only told him that…that day when they did the interview, he asked me why they asked me if he’d ever hit me, did I want them or what, and I said don’t talk like that. He asked whether they wanted people to get kicked out of their homes or what… I felt bad when he said do I want [for a sexual/intimate relationship] those people… I felt bad because he’s not supposed to speak that way, he should have just said okay.

Nonhlanhla, a widow, who had been in abusive marriage and relationships in the past, but did not describe the present relationship as abusive, stated that she did not inform her new boyfriend that she was asked about rape because it was not important for him to know. Mathapelo and Busisiwe reported that they discussed everything they were asked in the survey with their husbands without negative reaction from them. Both women had reported that their husbands were not physically abusive.

Most men did not discuss their survey participation with anyone, yet giving reasons that differed from those of women. Young men like Thabo, Rorisang and Thato who stay only with their mothers stated that they did not feel comfortable to discuss some survey questions with their mothers. Rorisang who reported to be addicted to nyaope- a cocktail of dagga and cheap heroin- which is very popular in this setting mentioned that he did not discuss his survey experience with his friends as they undermine him and don’t take him seriously. Also, he did not have the kind of relationship with his mother that would allow him to talk about personal issues.

However, other men reported to have discussed their participation in the survey with their mothers, wives, friends, and girlfriends. These men said they had a special relationship with the people they told and trusted them, so they felt comfortable to talk about the content of the survey with them.

Men reported positive reactions from the people they told about their survey participation. For example, Kelebogile’s mother was happy that he had participated in the survey and was particularly keen to know if he had reported that he was HIV positive. She was pleased to learn he had. In contrast, Vuyile’s girlfriend was not bothered by his participation in the study, yet she was unhappy that he had reported about their private life.

Impact of Research on Participants

Mapaseka did not experience overwhelming and prolonged distress resulting from the survey questions, even though she had spoken about her rape: She explained.

what I can say is that I feel very happy. I don’t have regrets in anyway, my spirit is at ease, (ngizizwa ngikhululeke kabe, angisoli ndawo, kushukuthi umoya wami umnandi kabi), maybe with time, it will heal completely in my heart and in my spirit. Maybe it will heal completely and no longer think about it (rape incident)… It is better to speak than keeping quiet about a matter.

From this narrative, it is apparent that speaking about the rape incident caused Mapaseka pain, yet she attached value in talking and had perceived it cathartic.

Similarly, for Nonhlanhla the survey had made her to think about her husband’s death, and this caused her pain at that time. She was HIV positive and had suspected that her husband died of AIDS related illness, but he had not told her he had AIDS. She explained:

I spoke to her but I felt that pain, because it reminded me of something I had forgotten that happened a long time ago…they [questions] were not hard to answer because they are things of the past but it was hard talking about his death but otherwise the talking about being HIV positive didn’t bother me at all because I know which stage I am in.

Mathapelo mentioned that the interview caused her to think about the abuse she witnessed when she was a child, where her uncle was physically and emotionally abusing her aunt, and reflecting on this had made her to feel sad.

Similarly, some men reported that some survey questions had made them reflect on painful experiences about their lives. For example, Sipho and Kelebogile mentioned that the survey had made them to think about their health condition, that they were HIV positive, something they prefer not doing. Thabo who had reported to be physically abusive to his girlfriend reported that the questions about partner abuse had made him to reflect on his own actions of beating his partner, and had a realization that he had abused her. As well, Rorisang mentioned that the survey made him to think about his drug addiction problem and he felt sad being reminded it was harmful to his health.

Our data suggest that women like Mapaseka, Cleopatra and Nonhlanhla who had reported to have experienced relatively major adversities in their lives, [rape, death of a loved one, and HIV], the survey made them to relive those painful experiences causing them sadness and pain at the time.

In the interviews informants were asked how the survey had impacted them. Although some informants had mentioned that talking about some experiences caused them sadness and pain, they felt the pain was temporary and not overwhelming. Furthermore most informants mentioned that the interview itself provided catharsis for them in different ways. It seems informants appreciated the opportunity to speak freely about the problems they have been bottling inside; a safe environment like the one seemingly provided by the survey interview, allowed them space to do this.

For some women, the experience of participating in the survey and the information they derived from the survey, had an empowering effect on them. For example, Mathapelo reported that after the survey she tried to communicate her displeasure to her husband about him forcing her to have sex when she is unwilling.

We found the same for men. Many said the survey was somewhat educational and empowering as it made them to reflect on important aspects of their lives, in particular implications of their behaviours, something they don’t normally do.

On the Referral Support System

In the interviews we asked the informants: did thinking about the issues that were asked in the survey cause you any distress? If yes, we asked: what kind of support they felt they needed.

Three informants (two women and a man) did not recall being given a list of referral support services they could go to by the field workers. However, many women, including those who reported to have had experienced partner violence or were in abusive relationships, reported having needed support for non-violence or study related issues. For example, Thandaza had needed assistance for the arthritis she was suffering from. She also mentioned that she needed help with the financial challenges at her home and being assisted with organizing a grant as she was ill.

Mapaseka said she needed help with claiming maintenance from the man who raped and impregnated her. It was evident that whilst Mapaseka had reported to have been emotionally and psychologically affected by her rape experience, the interview itself did not cause her overwhelming distress that may have warranted professional intervention. It may be that she had healed over the years. Her narrative supports this interpretation:

yes they gave me the paper (list of local referral services) but I have not looked at it properly…there was no help I needed for the things the researcher asked me about.

Nonhlanhla, who had reported that the interview had caused her to think about the death of her husband, said she would have been happy if the researchers had offered her a job and help with her municipal debt. Mirriam, who reported being in an abusive relationship, mentioned that she did not know the kind of support she needed because of the survey questions. This is congruent with what Margaret said. She had reported to be in an abusive marriage in which her husband beats her. Yet she said she did not need support resulting from answering survey questions. Likewise, although Mathapelo had said she often felt her husband forces her to have sex with him, and herself had equated this to rape, when asked the same question she posited:

no there isn’t help I needed because of the things I was asked in the survey…I’ve been alright after the interview; because I was able to explain what happened to someone else.

Almost all men in the study said they did not need any support because of the questions they were asked in the survey. Therefore, we asked them to think hypothetically if they had been affected negatively by the survey questions, what form of support they would have needed. Almost all reported that talking to significant people in their lives was their first preference. Mobutho’s narrative is illustrative:

Well I think the main support is still to talk to family members around. I think they are the ones who can support you all the way with that problem and comfort you. They are the ones who can comfort you when experiencing that thing; that is my belief; only family members can help you.

He further said:

counseling is better, counseling is one of the cures that can heal those wounds. I support even counseling, but my first preference is to talk to family members. Then if you are not happy with their support, then you can take plan B and go for counseling. But my first preference is family members and plan B is counseling.

Rorisang was an exception here as he felt if he had been distressed he would have sought comfort from smoking nyaope as he had no one to speak to. Sipho and Kelebogile, who were both HIV positive, however felt they would have needed support related to their ill-health and financial assistance.

Our findings suggest that some women remained with fear after the completion of the survey. From these women narratives, it was apparent that they were worried about the potential physical harm that could result as retaliation, mainly from their partners, if there could be a breach of confidentiality. Our analysis shows that mostly these women had a history of partner violence or other forms of GBV. The only excerption here was Busisiwe who reported not experiencing abuse from her marriage. Despite not experiencing physical abuse in her marriage, she was worried that her husband would react violently if he discovered she discussed their “private” information in the survey.

In contrast, no man reported fearing physical retaliation from a partner. This, perhaps, is unsurprising considering the patriarchal nature of the South African setting where men mostly have control and dominance over women and often perpetrates violence against women [20] . This may explain why only female informants reported fearing possible retaliation from their partners.

Many men in this study reported to have been shocked by the type of questions they were asked in the survey. They found some survey questions too personal and sensitive (e.g. questions on sex, number of sexual partners, HIV and partner abuse), and this caused discomfort for them. Our analysis reveals that the few men who reported emotional reaction to these questions, had also reported perpetrating intimate partner violence or were HIV positive, and thus, may have been uncomfortable to talk about these issues as that either reminded them of and invited them to confront and evaluate their own actions [21] and, for the others, illnesses.

Some participants, like Thabo and Sipho, mentioned in the qualitative interviews that they did not report honestly in the survey about perpetrating partner abuse or their health status (in particular HIV) but were candid about these in the qualitative interviews. The reason for this difference may be that YS had resided in the community for three months prior to conducting the interviews with men, and a sense of trust and confidence in the interview may have had developed potentially creating space for participants to answer questions more honestly. The one-off nature of the survey may have limited the space for a rapport to be established between participants and researchers and that, for some participants, may have led to discomfort in reporting sensitive and personal information.

Our data suggests that whilst a number of informants had emotional reaction to some survey questions, the vast majority thought the survey had a positive effect on them. This is similar to a finding reported by Griffin et al. [13] that whilst participants in their study had recently suffered acute sexual and domestic abuse and were subjected to extensive psychological and physiological assessments there was a high level of interest in the study with low levels of distress to assessment procedure.

Whilst many authors have studied the perceptions of or risks of research participation in interpersonal violence or trauma survivors, their focus has mainly been on emotional reaction or psychological risks [3] , [4] , [10] , [13] , with lack of focus on risk for physical harm to participants. Women research participants have been viewed as a vulnerable group and that, often, may be exposed to, as Wasunna [22] argued, immediate or perpetual danger of abuse through their participation in research [23] , [24] , [25] , [26] .

In an effort to protect research participants, (especially women) from potential abuse, researchers often do not introduce their studies as that on GBV at community level, and only reveal the actual focus of the research to the selected women only [23] , [25] . Additionally, researchers often advise the participants to not divulge the focus of the research to others, explaining that this is done to maximize participant protection [25] . However, IRBs and others have raised concerns that this may be construed as deception, and view this safeguard as ethically questionable. Jewkes and Wagman [26] have, however, argued that in the South African setting, community gatekeepers are often men, whom themselves could be perpetrators of GBV and may hold such views that legitimate dominance and control of women by men. Therefore they argue that under these circumstances, this ‘form’ of deception on community gatekeepers is justified; both in terms of concealing the true focus of the research and in terms of concealing the identity of individual research participants.

In keeping with Jewkes and Wagman [26] , we support a view that this form of deception should be for community gatekeepers, and not the participants. The survey was broadly termed and had included many other questions that were not GBV related (e.g. income, abortion, schooling, food etc), yet in the qualitative interviews, informants generally understood the focus of the research as being on issues of gender, sexuality, women abuse, gender relations, which all fall in the realm of GBV.

Whilst some informants, may have had heeded the advice not to tell others about the focus of the survey, the vast majority reported to have discussed their research participation, with some disclosing the full content of the survey. Therefore, in the interviews, we probed informants in order to understand whether this placed them at risk of physical harm or other form of abuse by third parties.

In terms of perceived risks of disclosing research participation and content we found gender differences. All men reported no negative reaction, in particular, from their wives or girlfriends. The same reason we gave about control and dominance of men over women in this setting should explain this phenomenon. In contrast, although not for all women, our data suggest that some women perceived risk in disclosing the full content of the survey, and indeed some received negative responses from their intimate partners, that were somewhat threatening. One woman [Margaret] who reported in her interview to be in an abusive marriage, stated that she did not disclose the survey content because she feared being physically assaulted by her husband. We also think she may have also heeded the advice from the fieldworker not to disclose the survey content.

Among women who had disclosed the full content of the survey, we noted differences according to interpersonal violence histories. Women who were in abusive relationships reported negative reactions that were relatively threatening from their partners. In contrast, women who had reported no abuse in their relationships reported that their partners were not bothered by the survey content. Whilst no woman reported being physically assaulted by an intimate partner because of participating in a GBV survey, this finding suggests that some women may be put at risk of harm if the content of the GBV survey is known by violent and controlling men [22] . Jewkes and Wagman [26] argue that violent men may be offended upon knowing that his partner had discussed his violent behavior in the study, and thus react by physically assaulting her as a form of punishment.

Our findings support the WHO [27] recommendation that the actual focus of GBV survey should be concealed at community level, told only to participating women, and that women participants should be advised not to disclose the focus of GBV in the survey [see also 28]. This recommendation protects a particularly vulnerable subgroup of women i.e. those in abusive or potentially abusive relationships. Our data reveal that full disclosure of GBV focus of survey to abusive and controlling men, may trigger violence, and lead to harm for women participants. This aspect of risk to research participants is of particular importance in our understanding of risks to research participants. Our study provides important evidence on this risk; however, more research is needed, from this setting and elsewhere, in order to adequately understand the characteristics of participants who are more vulnerable to physical harm and the circumstances under which this harm could occur. This can maximize participants’ protection.

IRBs and researchers have raised concern that interpersonal violence and trauma survivors as research participants may be emotionally or psychologically harmed by being asked about their adversarial histories [2] , [11] , [13] . This concern is, however, based on anecdotal evidence, or often, assumptions and worst case scenarios of research atrocities [11] , [13] . Our study findings reveal that although there was no remarkable difference between men and women in reporting distress resulting from research participation, slightly more women reported sadness or pain when reflecting on painful experiences, than males. This finding is analogous to that reported by Kuyper et al. [11] in their study with young people in the Netherlands. They reported that women expressed more distress because of the questions asked as compared to men.

While in their study DePrince and Freyd [4] did not find evidence that cultural taboo may be the cause of upset for survivors of abuse and interpersonal violence, in the present study some men felt it was unusual to be asked some of the things in the survey, as such, they were somewhat upset by this. However, we also think some men may have been upset with the partner abuse questions because they perceived such questions as somewhat incriminating [10] , [21] , and for others, questions on HIV status [Sipho and Kelebogile] and drug abuse [Rorisang] may have made them to reflect on their actions and to think they were to blame for their current conditions.

Authors have argued that the ‘mere presence of sexual abuse history does not predict women’s negative emotional reactions to research, but that assault characteristics and post assault attributions and distress levels also play a role’ [1] . Griffin and colleagues [13] concur, they reported that while women in their study had recently suffered acute sexual and domestic abuse and were subjected to extensive psychological and psychophysiological assessments, they did not get damaging effects from this experience. Similarly, Johnson and Benight [6] found that the recent domestic violence victims tolerate trauma research fairly well. In the present study, although some informants had reported about traumas that had happened years ago, some were still in abusive relationships and others had HIV or had AIDS, yet they did not find it emotionally damaging to talk about such experiences in the survey. In support of this reasoning, Johnson and Benight [6] argue that ‘the ability to tolerate research that asks about sensitive and traumatic experiences may be related to coping self efficacy, the perceived ability to cope with recovery demands.’

Our data suggest that the emotional reaction to survey questions, to those who reported it, was temporal and not overwhelming, and thus would not be categorized as emotionally or psychologically harmful [4] . Jorm et al. [3] did a systematic review of literature investigating whether there is evidence that participation in psychiatric research causes harm. Particularly focusing on long-term effects of research participation, these authors concluded that there appears to be little evidence to show any long-term harm to participants even if research studies traumatic experiences. In the current study, not a single informant, reported effects of survey questions that suggested that the impact would have warranted intervention. Kuyper et al. [11] argue that emotional effects resulting from research participation may quickly fade away, and this may explain why our informants, even though had reported distress, also stated that they did not feel they needed any help. We argue that the distinction between sadness and pain and being psychologically damaged in the research context is important to make as the former seems not to equate the latter, as often assumed.

Our data shows that whilst a number of informants had felt discomfort with some survey questions, none regretted participating in the survey. Rather, including those who had reported distress, an overwhelming majority reported positive feelings about the survey [3] ; with a number of informants mentioning that the survey interview itself had provided catharsis for them. In Edwards et al. [1] study, women who had experienced child sexual abuse and those who experienced adult sexual abuse reported more personal benefits to research participation as compared to women without abuse histories. Similarly, although with a somewhat younger sample, Kuyper and associates [11] enrolled 889 sexually experienced young people in the Netherlands examining the effects of asking the participants about various sexual topics in a large-scale sexuality study. They found that the overwhelming majority of participants reported positive feelings and benefits from research participation [11] .

In the current study, a number of informants, in particular those who had major adversities in their lives (e.g. sexual assault, IPV, HIV), mentioned that they do not often get a safe space to talk about their traumatic experiences, and for them, the survey had provided this. As such, they found research participation cathartic as it allowed them space to relate their experiences to a person who was willing to listen and empathetic. This finding is consistent with Johnson and Benight [6] view that research participation may serve as a catharsis and or a motivation to seek help. Additionally, Campbell [29] in her book about the impact of researching rape argues that the ‘very act of research participation is something of an intervention in its own right.’ Our data provide support to this notion. In a setting like South Africa where women often do not have a “voice”, our findings show that women in this study felt acknowledged by being given a safe space to voice out their inner and commonly suppressed feelings.

In 2001 the WHO published the Ethical and Safety Recommendations for Research on Domestic Violence Against Women guidelines. Reflected in these guidelines is also a recommendation that ‘field researchers should be trained to refer women requesting assistance to available local services and sources of support. Where few resources exist, it may be necessary for the study to create short-term support mechanisms’. This recommendation provides a duty for GBV researchers, but does not clearly articulate the boundaries of such a duty thus opening it to various interpretations [22] . The dominant interpretation has been that for GBV research with women to meet the ethical requirements, it has to make a provision for referral to local services [22] , [26] . As such, studies on interpersonal violence often employ varying safeguards that include offering to provide referrals to local counseling services [9] . This has been the case even though there has been little or no empirical evidence suggesting it is a needed and useful safeguard in this field [26] .

Adhering to this recommendation, the survey had made a provision for referral to local services for all participants in the survey [14] . The setting of the survey is well resourced thus services were readily available; and therefore not necessary to create short-term mechanisms. In the present study we explored whether the participants perceived the emotional reaction they had to the survey questions warranted professional intervention, and which participants needed this. We had anticipated that those who reported major adversities in their lives would be more likely to report needing help after the survey, yet none of the informants reported having needed support because of the survey questions. This is consistent with the findings from a study in Netherlands where Kuyper et al. [11] reported that of the 889 participants, one in four reported distress (like feeling down or sad), yet only 3.5% of the sample experienced a need for help.

In the current study we found no difference according to interpersonal violence or trauma experiences or gender in reporting the need for help. However, some informants reported that had they felt they needed emotional support because of the survey questions, they would have preferred to talk to family members rather than attending professional counseling. They perceived that family members knew them better and would thus provide better support.

Much of the published research on this area is from North America and Europe and we are not aware of any from South Africa. Therefore data from the current study is important as it provides evidence for risks and benefits perceived by research participants from a South African perspective. This will aid, as well, South African IRBs and researchers in their decision making about the risk-benefit ratio of studies on interpersonal violence and trauma in South Africa and similar settings.

This qualitative study was conducted one to three months after the survey; therefore it could not capture participants’ long-term reactions to and consequences of survey participation. As discussed above, some women had remained with fear (of violent reprisals) after participating in the survey. Yet during the period between one to three months post survey, in the qualitative interviews, none reported these fears being realized. Specifically, none reported being physical harmed as a punishment for research participation.

Studies that require people to recall and report about past events, especially feelings and emotions, after some time had passed, may have a problem of recall bias. In the current study, few informants could not recall survey questions that distressed or upset them. We argue that, had the experiences been harmful with long-lasting effects, informants would still be experiencing the effects and thus able to report those in the interviews.

Whilst the participants in this qualitative study had initially been randomly selected to participate in the survey [14] , it is the nature of qualitative research that the findings are not generalisable. Their importance is that they are the lived experiences of survey participants and may thus be important to guide researchers on how to approach community-based studies involving human participants in this and similar settings elsewhere [16] .

We have presented findings showing that the majority of participants in this study, including those who had endured violence, did not feel answering the survey questions had caused them emotional or physical harm. Some had reported feeling sad and upset on reflecting on painful life experiences during the survey interview, but they felt these emotions quickly went away, and most of them perceived participating in the survey positively. However, we suggest that even in the light of evidence that some participants were temporarily distressed and had been anxious about menacing responses from their partners when they told them about survey participation, research protocols need to put in place safeguards. As such we recommend that future community-based research should adhere to the WHO guidelines and safety recommendations [27] including concealing the violence focus of the research and to continuously advise women participants not to disclose the focus of the research to third parties, in particular their partners. We suggest that this should be practice in all community-based research involving women as it is currently not well understood which men may react violently and what may specifically make them to react violently.

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank the participants who shared their time, reflections and experiences which made this analysis possible. We wish to acknowledge both Elizabeth Dartnall and Dr Mzikazi Nduna for their scholarly advice on building arguments in this paper.

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Funding: This work was supported by the baseline funds of the South African Medical Research Council. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

• Fact sheets
• Facts in pictures
• Publications
• Questions and answers
• Tools and toolkits
• Endometriosis
• Excessive heat
• Mental disorders
• Polycystic ovary syndrome
• All countries
• Eastern Mediterranean
• South-East Asia
• Western Pacific
• Data by country
• Country presence 
• Country strengthening 
• Country cooperation strategies 
• News releases
• Feature stories
• Press conferences
• Commentaries
• Photo library
• Afghanistan
• Cholera 
• Coronavirus disease (COVID-19)
• Greater Horn of Africa
• Israel and occupied Palestinian territory
• Disease Outbreak News
• Situation reports
• Weekly Epidemiological Record
• Surveillance
• Health emergency appeal
• International Health Regulations
• Independent Oversight and Advisory Committee
• Classifications
• Data collections
• Global Health Observatory
• Global Health Estimates
• Mortality Database
• Sustainable Development Goals
• Health Inequality Monitor
• Global Progress
• World Health Statistics
• Partnerships
• Committees and advisory groups
• Collaborating centres
• Technical teams
• Organizational structure
• Initiatives
• General Programme of Work
• WHO Academy
• Investment in WHO
• WHO Foundation
• External audit
• Financial statements
• Internal audit and investigations 
• Programme Budget
• Results reports
• Governing bodies
• World Health Assembly
• Executive Board
• Member States Portal
• Publications /

Researching violence against women: a practical guide for researchers and activists

Produced by PATH and the World Health Organization, this guide draws on the experience of researchers from more than 40 countries and presents methods for performing surveys and qualitative research on gender-based violence in low-resource settings. It covers all aspects of the research process, from study design to training field workers. It also describes ways to use findings to influence decision-makers. Most important, it presents clear guidelines for protecting the safety of women participating in the research.

Gender-Based Violence (Violence Against Women and Girls)

Photo: Simone D. McCourtie / World Bank

Gender-based violence (GBV) or violence against women and girls (VAWG), is a global pandemic that affects 1 in 3 women in their lifetime.

The numbers are staggering:

• 35% of women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence.
• Globally, 7% of women have been sexually assaulted by someone other than a partner.
• Globally, as many as 38% of murders of women are committed by an intimate partner.
• 200 million women have experienced female genital mutilation/cutting.

This issue is not only devastating for survivors of violence and their families, but also entails significant social and economic costs. In some countries, violence against women is estimated to cost countries up to 3.7% of their GDP – more than double what most governments spend on education.

Failure to address this issue also entails a significant cost for the future.  Numerous studies have shown that children growing up with violence are more likely to become survivors themselves or perpetrators of violence in the future.

One characteristic of gender-based violence is that it knows no social or economic boundaries and affects women and girls of all socio-economic backgrounds: this issue needs to be addressed in both developing and developed countries.

Decreasing violence against women and girls requires a community-based, multi-pronged approach, and sustained engagement with multiple stakeholders. The most effective initiatives address underlying risk factors for violence, including social norms regarding gender roles and the acceptability of violence.

The World Bank is committed to addressing gender-based violence through investment, research and learning, and collaboration with stakeholders around the world.

Since 2003, the World Bank has engaged with countries and partners to support projects and knowledge products aimed at preventing and addressing GBV. The Bank supports over $300 million in development projects aimed at addressing GBV in World Bank Group (WBG)-financed operations, both through standalone projects and through the integration of GBV components in sector-specific projects in areas such as transport, education, social protection, and forced displacement.  Recognizing the significance of the challenge, addressing GBV in operations has been highlighted as a World Bank priority, with key commitments articulated under both IDA 17 and 18, as well as within the World Bank Group Gender Strategy .

The World Bank conducts analytical work —including rigorous impact evaluation—with partners on gender-based violence to generate lessons on effective prevention and response interventions at the community and national levels.

The World Bank regularly  convenes a wide range of development stakeholders  to share knowledge and build evidence on what works to address violence against women and girls.

Over the last few years, the World Bank has ramped up its efforts to address more effectively GBV risks in its operations , including learning from other institutions.

Addressing GBV is a significant, long-term development challenge. Recognizing the scale of the challenge, the World Bank’s operational and analytical work has expanded substantially in recent years.   The Bank’s engagement is building on global partnerships, learning, and best practices to test and advance effective approaches both to prevent GBV—including interventions to address the social norms and behaviors that underpin violence—and to scale up and improve response when violence occurs.  

World Bank-supported initiatives are important steps on a rapidly evolving journey to bring successful interventions to scale, build government and local capacity, and to contribute to the knowledge base of what works and what doesn’t through continuous monitoring and evaluation.

Addressing the complex development challenge of gender-based violence requires significant learning and knowledge sharing through partnerships and long-term programs. The World Bank is committed to working with countries and partners to prevent and address GBV in its projects. 

Knowledge sharing and learning

Violence against Women and Girls: Lessons from South Asia is the first report of its kind to gather all available data and information on GBV in the region. In partnership with research institutions and other development organizations, the World Bank has also compiled a comprehensive review of the global evidence for effective interventions to prevent or reduce violence against women and girls. These lessons are now informing our work in several sectors, and are captured in sector-specific resources in the VAWG Resource Guide: www.vawgresourceguide.org .

The World Bank’s  Global Platform on Addressing GBV in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Settings  facilitated South-South knowledge sharing through workshops and yearly learning tours, building evidence on what works to prevent GBV, and providing quality services to women, men, and child survivors.  The Platform included a $13 million cross-regional and cross-practice initiative, establishing pilot projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Nepal, Papua New Guinea, and Georgia, focused on GBV prevention and mitigation, as well as knowledge and learning activities.

The World Bank regularly convenes a wide range of development stakeholders to address violence against women and girls. For example, former WBG President Jim Yong Kim committed to an annual  Development Marketplace  competition, together with the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI) , to encourage researchers from around the world to build the evidence base of what works to prevent GBV. In April 2019, the World Bank awarded $1.1 million to 11 research teams from nine countries as a result of the fourth annual competition.

Addressing GBV in World Bank Group-financed operations

The World Bank supports both standalone GBV operations, as well as the integration of GBV interventions into development projects across key sectors.

Standalone GBV operations include:

• In August 2018, the World Bank committed $100 million to help prevent GBV in the DRC . The Gender-Based Violence Prevention and Response Project will reach 795,000 direct beneficiaries over the course of four years. The project will provide help to survivors of GBV, and aim to shift social norms by promoting gender equality and behavioral change through strong partnerships with civil society organizations. 
• In the  Great Lakes Emergency Sexual and Gender Based Violence & Women's Health Project , the World Bank approved $107 million in financial grants to Burundi, the DRC, and Rwanda  to provide integrated health and counseling services, legal aid, and economic opportunities to survivors of – or those affected by – sexual and gender-based violence. In DRC alone, 40,000 people, including 29,000 women, have received these services and support.
• The World Bank is also piloting innovative uses of social media to change behaviors . For example, in the South Asia region, the pilot program WEvolve  used social media  to empower young women and men to challenge and break through prevailing norms that underpin gender violence.

Learning from the Uganda Transport Sector Development Project and following the Global GBV Task Force’s recommendations , the World Bank has developed and launched a rigorous approach to addressing GBV risks in infrastructure operations:

• Guided by the GBV Good Practice Note launched in October 2018, the Bank is applying new standards in GBV risk identification, mitigation and response to all new operations in sustainable development and infrastructure sectors.
• These standards are also being integrated into active operations; GBV risk management approaches are being applied to a selection of operations identified high risk in fiscal year (FY) 2019.
• In the East Asia and Pacific region , GBV prevention and response interventions – including a code of conduct on sexual exploitation and abuse – are embedded within the Vanuatu Aviation Investment Project .
• The Liberia Southeastern Corridor Road Asset Management Project , where sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) awareness will be raised, among other strategies, as part of a pilot project to employ women in the use of heavy machinery. 
• The Bolivia Santa Cruz Road Corridor Project uses a three-pronged approach to address potential GBV, including a Code of Conduct for their workers; a Grievance Redress Mechanism (GRM) that includes a specific mandate to address any kinds gender-based violence; and concrete measures to empower women and to bolster their economic resilience by helping them learn new skills, improve the production and commercialization of traditional arts and crafts, and access more investment opportunities.
• The Mozambique Integrated Feeder Road Development Project identified SEA as a substantial risk during project preparation and takes a preemptive approach: a Code of Conduct; support to – and guidance for – the survivors in case any instances of SEA were to occur within the context of the project – establishing a “survivor-centered approach” that creates multiple entry points for anyone experiencing SEA to seek the help they need; and these measures are taken in close coordination with local community organizations, and an international NGO Jhpiego, which has extensive experience working in Mozambique.

Strengthening institutional efforts to address GBV  

In October 2016, the World Bank launched the  Global Gender-Based Violence Task Force  to strengthen the institution’s efforts to prevent and respond to risks of GBV, and particularly sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) that may arise in World Bank-supported projects. It builds on existing work by the World Bank and other actors to tackle violence against women and girls through strengthened approaches to identifying and assessing key risks, and developing key mitigations measures to prevent and respond to sexual exploitation and abuse and other forms of GBV. 

In line with its commitments under IDA 18 , the World Bank developed an Action Plan for Implementation of the Task Force’s recommendations , consolidating key actions across institutional priorities linked to enhancing social risk management, strengthening operational systems to enhance accountability, and building staff and client capacity to address risks of GBV through training and guidance materials.

As part of implementation of the GBV Task Force recommendations, the World Bank has developed a GBV risk assessment tool and rigorous methodology to assess contextual and project-related risks. The tool is used by any project containing civil works.

The World Bank has developed a Good Practice Note (GPN) with recommendations to assist staff in identifying risks of GBV, particularly sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment that can emerge in investment projects with major civil works contracts. Building on World Bank experience and good international industry practices, the note also advises staff on how to best manage such risks. A similar toolkit and resource note for Borrowers is under development, and the Bank is in the process of adapting the GPN for key sectors in human development.

The GPN provides good practice for staff on addressing GBV risks and impacts in the context of the Environmental and Social Framework (ESF) launched on October 1, 2018, including the following ESF standards, as well as the safeguards policies that pre-date the ESF: 

• ESS 1: Assessment and Management of Environmental and Social Risks and Impacts;
• ESS 2: Labor and Working Conditions;
• ESS 4: Community Health and Safety; and
• ESS 10: Stakeholder Engagement and Information Disclosure.

In addition to the Good Practice Note and GBV Risk Assessment Screening Tool, which enable improved GBV risk identification and management, the Bank has made important changes in its operational processes, including the integration of SEA/GBV provisions into its safeguard and procurement requirements as part of evolving Environmental, Social, Health and Safety (ESHS) standards, elaboration of GBV reporting and response measures in the Environmental and Social Incident Reporting Tool, and development of guidance on addressing GBV cases in our grievance redress mechanisms.

In line with recommendations by the Task Force to disseminate lessons learned from past projects, and to sensitize staff on the importance of addressing risks of GBV and SEA, the World Bank has developed of trainings for Bank staff to raise awareness of GBV risks and to familiarize staff with new GBV measures and requirements.  These trainings are further complemented by ongoing learning events and intensive sessions of GBV risk management.

Last Updated: Sep 25, 2019

• FEATURE STORY To End Poverty You Have to Eliminate Violence Against Women and Girls
• TOOLKIT Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Resource Guide

DRC, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, and Rwanda Join Forces to Fight Sexual and Gender-...

More than one in three women worldwide have experienced sexual and gender-based violence during their lifetime. In contexts of fragility and conflict, sexual violence is often exacerbated.

Supporting Women Survivors of Violence in Africa's Great Lakes Region

The Great Lakes Emergency SGBV and Women’s Health Project is the first World Bank project in Africa with a major focus on offering integrated services to survivors of sexual and gender-based violence.

To End Poverty, Eliminate Gender-Based Violence

Intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence are economic consequences that contribute to ongoing poverty. Ede Ijjasz-Vasquez, Senior Director at the World Bank, explains the role that social norms play in ...

This site uses cookies to optimize functionality and give you the best possible experience. If you continue to navigate this website beyond this page, cookies will be placed on your browser. To learn more about cookies, click here .

Gender-based violence in schools a significant barrier to the right to education

Worldwide an estimated 246 million children experience school-related violence every year. Unequal gender norms and power relations are a key driver of this violence, manifesting itself as bullying and physical abuse, corporal punishment, sexual and verbal harassment, nonconsensual touching and other forms of sexual assault.

School-related gender based violence (SRGBV) as ‘a serious barrier to achieving universal education’ was the subject of a panel discussion at the 60th Annual Conference for the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) in Vancouver, March 6-10.

Jenelle Babb, from UNESCO’s Section of Health and Education, was joined by representatives from USAID, University College of London’s Institute of Education, Concern Worldwide, Global Women’s Institute, and Promundo, to discuss gaps in knowledge around SRGBV, its impact on children’s well-being and educational outcomes, and effective solutions.

Under the theme, Envisioning schools free from gender-based violence: Using evidence for action, the panel explored the challenges and opportunities in research, programming, monitoring and evaluation of SRGBV; and some of the ways policy-makers and practitioners can address the issue.

More work needed to promote safe spaces

Babb told panel participants that while the subject of SRGBV has become more prominent in recent years, evidence shows that more work is needed on policy and regulatory frameworks that promote safe and inclusive learning spaces and a zero-tolerance approach to violence.

“We need to consider strengthening linkages among the many partners working on issues of school violence and childhood violence, applying a ‘gender lens’ to violence and interpersonal relationships and dynamics within the school setting,” she said.

Natko Gereš of Promundo-US said the education sector had a critical role to play in empowering all learners with transformative education that examines gender and social norms and power dynamics. He noted that violence is a defining feature in the lives of many men and boys in low and middle-income countries, shaping their concept of masculinity and their relationships with women.

“We need to understand how to create safe, violence-free learning environments where boys and girls have equal opportunities,” Geres said.

Sustainable Development Goals serve as framework

Dr Manuel Contreras Urbina of the Global Women’s Institute observed that: “The SDGs serve as an international framework against which countries will be obligated to develop evidence for reporting on indicators and targets on gender based violence”

In addition to learning new evidence on SRGBV policy and programming interventions from low and middle income settings, the session also highlights forthcoming resources including the new USAID SRGBV conceptual measurement framework and toolkit, and the soon-to-be-released Global Guidance on addressing SRGBV, jointly published by UNESCO and UN Women.

The panel discussion at the annual CIES conference was an effort of the Global Working Group on SRGBV, co-convened by UNESCO and the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI).

• School-related gender-based violence
• Health education

Related items

• Right to education

More on this subject

HerAtlas: Monitoring the right to education for girls and women HerAtlas: Background, rationale and objectives 12 March 2024

Other recent news

What is gender-based violence – and how do we prevent it?

Gender-based violence (GBV)  is present in every society around the world and takes many forms. We have a moral imperative to stop all forms of violence against women and girls.

In crisis, whether conflict or natural disaster, the risk of GBV increases, and so does our collective need to act to prevent GBV before it happens or respond to the needs of women and girls when it does.

The IRC has been working specifically to prevent and respond to GBV since 1996, meaning we have over 25 years of experience. 

Women and girls are disproportionately impacted by all forms of gender-based violence. Below, we consider why this happens, and what we can do to prevent it. 

Support our work

What is gender-based violence .

Gender-based violence (GBV) is an umbrella term for harmful acts of abuse perpetrated against a person’s will and rooted in a system of unequal power between women and men. This is true for both conflict-affected and non-conflict settings.

The UN defines violence against women as, ‘any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.

Over one-third of women and girls globally will experience some form of violence in their lifetime . However, this rate is higher in emergencies, conflict, and crisis, where vulnerability and risks are increased and most often family, community, and legal protections have broken down.

Harm caused by GBV comes in a variety of visible and invisible forms—it also includes the threat of violence. 

GBV can manifest in a variety of ways. Some of these include: physical violence, such as assault or slavery; emotional or psychological violence, such as verbal abuse or confinement; sexual abuse, including rape; harmful practices, like child marriage and female genital mutilation; socio-economic violence, which includes denial of resources; and sexual harassment, exploitation and abuse.

What is Intimate Partner Violence (IPV)?

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), or ‘domestic violence’ is an all-too-common form of violence against women and girls. It refers to any behavior from a current or previous partner that causes harm—including physical aggression, sexual coercion, psychological abuse and controlling behaviors.

Globally, the UN reports  that one in four women have been subjected to physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner at least once in their lifetime, and IRC research has shown that it is the most common form of violence against women and girls in humanitarian contexts.

Who is most at risk?

Gender-based violence can happen to anyone. However, it disproportionately affects women and girls. Those in crisis settings are at a double disadvantage due to their gender and their situation.

Women and girls from other diverse and marginalized communities face an even greater risk where gender inequality intersects with other forms of oppression.

Those at higher risk include:

• Women and girls living with disabilities
• Young and adolescent girls
• Older women
• People who identify as LGBTQ+
• Women of ethnic minorities
• Refugees and migrants

While we reference these different identities separately, each person holds multiple identities at once. For example, a woman who lives with a disability might also be an older refugee. 

This is why it’s important to understand the concept of intersectionality — that a person faces different kinds of discrimination and risks due to a combination of their identities like gender, race, religion, age.

It is crucial to understand intersectionality when working to determine and provide prevention and response services. For instance, research has found that adolescent girls living in displacement are particularly at risk  of being overlooked in emergency settings, where they may fall between the cracks of child protection services and those aimed at adult women.

What causes gender-based violence in crisis settings?

Gender inequality, and the norms and beliefs that violence against women and girls is acceptable, cause gender-based violence. There are also many factors that increase the risk of GBV, with women and girls living through crises experiencing an increase in both the frequency and severity of GBV.

This is because the same conditions that contribute to conflict and forced displacement also accelerate GBV. These include:

Research from What Works found that when families are pushed into poverty, harmful practices like child marriages increase . Young girls may be pulled out of education for marriage, to help with domestic tasks or to generate an income. Unemployment and economic distress in the household can increase instances of IPV, as well. 

2. Breakdown of services

A collapse of community structure and the rule of law means women can find themselves without social support and protection systems in violent situations. It can also result in women and girls traveling great distances in search of food, water or fuel, further increasing risk of sexual harassment and assault.

3. Conflict and war

Rising numbers of conflicts globally are driving an increase in conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV). Without the rule of law, CRSV is often carried out with impunity. Armed forces may use rape as a weapon of war. Other forms of CRSV include sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, enforced sterilization, forced marriage and other forms of sexual violence. 

4. Displacement

Women living in refugee camps and other temporary accommodation can face safety issues that put them at greater risk. This can include having no locks on bathroom doors, joint male and female facilities, and inadequate lighting.

Women living as refugees may have to find new livelihoods, which can lead to an increased risk of exploitation. 

Displaced women and girls in emergencies are often less visible . They’re not always included in national surveys or reports, which means their needs go unmet. 

5. Stress in the home

Intimate partner violence is the most common form of violence women experience in humanitarian settings. IRC research suggests that IPV and child maltreatment and abuse occur more frequently when families experience an inability to meet their basic needs, alcohol and substance abuse and inconsistent income.

Effects of gender-based violence

Violence has a long lasting effect on survivors and their families. Impacts can range from physical harm to long-term emotional distress to fatalities . Rape and sexual assault can result in unwanted pregnancies, complications during pregnancy and birth, and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV.

Social and economic fallout from GBV can lead to a loss of livelihood and increased gender inequalities in the long term. Reporting or seeking services for GBV can lead to further threats of violence, social stigma and ostracization. GBV is also a key barrier to women and girls accessing other lifesaving services, such as food, shelter and healthcare. 

Crises are not short-term occurrences . Climate-related disasters can create recurrent crises and many women and girls who are forcibly displaced can end up living in temporary accommodation for years. 

This exposes women and girls to GBV for longer and can draw out and compound the effects of that violence for decades, hampering long-term resilience and empowerment.

Preventing gender-based violence

While GBV continues to be a huge risk that women and girls face daily, there are ways to prevent it. Some of these include:

• Keeping girls in school
• Empowering women economically
• Using feminist approaches to tackle gender inequality, including in the home
• Providing women and girls with safe spaces
• Giving women cash support
• Engaging male allies
• Including women in decision-making at leadership level
• Supporting local women-led and women's rights organizations

Comprehensive GBV services need to be established quickly in times of crisis to protect women and girls and reduce their exposure to violence, while increasing their chances of recovery and resilience.

Humanitarian organizations should bring a feminist approach to programming , that takes into account the unequal power balance between genders when designing support and interventions for crisis-affected populations. 

Yet, despite knowing the scope of the problem, the serious and at times fatal effects of GBV, and that we can prevent and respond to it, GBV is still not prioritized with enough urgency during humanitarian responses. In 2021,  just 28% of GBV funding requirements were met , the lowest proportion reported over the previous four years and down from 32% in 2020.

The IRC response

The IRC prioritizes the needs of women and girls across its programming. We work to support the resilience and dignity of women and girls exposed to violence in crisis settings in over 50 countries worldwide. 

The IRC delivers essential healthcare, GBV case management and psychosocial support to survivors, including through safe spaces and outreach teams. In 2022, we provided 177,404 women and girls with psychosocial support and registered 43,817 GBV survivors for case management, ensuring that they receive necessary emotional, medical, psychosocial and other support services throughout their recovery journey.

Donate now to support our work.

Explore related topics:

• Women and girls
• Gender-Based Violence
• #RefugeesWelcome

Related news & features

• Where We Work
• How To Help
• Code of Conduct
• Ethics Hotline
• 87% Program services
• 7% Management and general
• 6% Fundraising

Get the latest news about the IRC's innovative programs, compelling stories about our clients and how you can make a difference. Subscribe

• U.S./Global
• Phone Opt Out
• Respecting Your Privacy
• Terms and Conditions
• Fraud Prevention

Vivian Hoang Vivian Hoang

Leave your feedback

• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-to-know-about-the-violence-against-women-act-as-the-landmark-law-turns-30

What to know about the Violence Against Women Act as the landmark law turns 30

Thirty years ago, a new law transformed the way the United States recognizes and combats gender-based violence.

The Violence Against Women Act, signed by President Bill Clinton on Sept. 13, 1994, was the first federal legislative package to designate domestic violence and sexual assault as crimes and require a community-coordinated response to violence against women.

It was the “most critical” piece of legislation to address gender-based violence, said Pamela Jacobs, CEO of the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence. Jacobs, herself a survivor of sexual abuse, says the act has been instrumental in helping women lead violence-free lives through greater services and support, holding perpetrators accountable for their crimes and encouraging survivors to come forward.

WATCH: Biden delivers remarks on 30th anniversary of Violence Against Women Act

“It’s really been life-changing for thousands and thousands of people, and has saved countless lives as well,” Jacobs said.

Between 1993 and 2022, domestic violence rates dropped by 67 percent and the rate of rapes and sexual assaults fell 56 percent, the White House said in a statement Thursday .

President Joe Biden authored and championed the legislation as a senator, introducing the bill in 1990. At a White House event held Thursday to honor VAWA’s 30th anniversary, the president said he met his goal of not only changing the law, but changing the “culture of America” by bringing the “hidden epidemic” of domestic violence “out of the shadows.”

Recalling his own father’s gentleness and abhorrence of violence against women and children, Biden said he believed that the only way to address the problem “was by shining a light on that culture and speaking its name.”

President Joe Biden marks the 30th anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act on the South Lawn of the White House on Sept. 12, 2024 in Washington. Photo by Andrew Harnik/ Getty Images

Biden thanked advocates like those who run shelters and rape crisis centers and “survivors who speak up for themselves and empower those who suffer in silence.”

“You’ve turned your pain into purpose, and your bravery and spirit are unbreakable,” Biden said. “Because of you — and this is not hyperbole — because of you, we’re a better nation than we were 30 years ago.”

What does the Violence Against Women Act do?

In no small part, VAWA shifted how Americans talk about gender-based violence by providing language and education awareness-raising to survivors and policymakers, Jacobs said. VAWA brought crimes that “thrive in silence,” like domestic violence and sex trafficking, out from behind closed doors and turned sexual violence into a societal and cultural issue rather than just a private one, she said. It became more difficult for perpetrators to operate with complete impunity as the criminal justice system began to take sexual violence crimes more seriously.

Pre-VAWA, domestic violence “was considered shameful, it was a family secret,” Jacobs said. “We didn’t see prevention initiatives and things to even just make people aware of what was happening and what options they had.”

Among many its many effects, VAWA also:

• Authorized the creation of the National Domestic Violence Hotline, which continues to receive as many as 3,000 calls a day.
• Included the first federal criminal law against battering.
• Required protection orders to be upheld across state lines.
• Created the Office of Violence Against Women under the Department of Justice.
• Funded sexual assault forensic examinations, rape crisis centers and trauma-informed law enforcement trainings.
• Provided social and legal services to victims of sexual and domestic violence, including housing and immigration protections.
• Improved protections for victims of dating violence and stalking in a 2000 expansion of the law.

In a 2022 reauthorization , it also:

• Increased services for LGBTQ+ survivors, who are traditionally underserved.
• Empowered tribal courts to prosecute non-Native perpetrators of domestic and sexual crimes.
• Created a new National Resource Center on Cybercrimes Against Individuals and prioritized prosecuting perpetrators of cybercrimes.
• Enacted the Fairness for Rape Kit Backlog Survivors Act, which prevented sexual assault survivors from being unfairly blocked from receiving compensation due to rape kit backlogs.

What’s next for the law?

Biden announced Thursday that the Department of Justice will allocate more than $690 million in grant funding to support survivors of gender-based violence, including training for law enforcement. He named housing and cybercrimes as top concerns, stating his administration will focus on guaranteeing housing for survivors and preventing what he called “the next frontier of gender-based violence” — AI-generated deepfakes and online sexual abuse.

Many of these actions build on aspects of Congress’ 2022 reauthorization of VAWA, which is up for federal renewal every five years .

The White House statement also supported the use of federal funds to “keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers” and to continue narrowing what advocates have called the “boyfriend loophole,” by preventing not only married spouses but also stalkers and current and former dating partners from obtaining a firearm if convicted of domestic abuse.

WATCH: Ban on domestic violence abusers owning guns upheld by Supreme Court

VAWA’s 2022 renewal was initially met with strong opposition from GOP lawmakers and the National Rifle Association due to a provision in the bill that aimed to expand limits on firearm access. The provision would have prohibited individuals with misdemeanor stalking convictions from possessing firearms and closed the “boyfriend loophole.”

While Democrats removed the provision from the VAWA reauthorization to get it passed, Congress later that year signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act into law. That gun safety legislation prohibits individuals convicted of misdemeanors in dating relationships from purchasing or possessing firearms for at least five years.

The Supreme Court this summer also upheld a federal law that prevents anyone subject to a domestic-violence restraining order from possessing a gun in United States v. Rahimi.

What do advocates want to see?

Jennifer Mondino, director of the TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund at the National Women’s Law Center, hopes that future renewals of VAWA implement more firearm limitations and checks on individuals with an established history of sexual violence.

“We have a huge problem with guns in this country, and [guns are] so, so often — I think heartbreakingly often — inextricably linked with sexual violence,” Mondino said. “If you look into the personal histories of so many people that have been involved in acts of violence in our country, let’s say in the last decade or so, so often those are people that had personal histories of sexual violence.”

The CDC estimates that every month an average of 70 women are shot and killed by an intimate partner. Two-thirds of intimate partner homicides in the U.S. are committed with a gun, and 75 percent of intimate partner firearm homicide victims are women, according to Everytown Research and Policy .

READ MORE: For incarcerated survivors of domestic violence, a new Oklahoma law is another chance at justice

In addition to gun violence prevention, Christian Nunes, president of the National Organization for Women, says she wants future iterations of VAWA to address “the intersections of climate injustices and violence against women,” as well as the disproportionate effect of sexual and domestic violence on Indigenous women and women of color.

While advocates are celebrating and reflecting on their progress achieving greater visibility and safety for women, especially those from marginalized communities, Nunes also hopes this 30th anniversary will be a reminder of all the work still needed to be done.

“It’s so important that we’re starting to finally, at this 30th anniversary, recognize that we have to have a holistic approach in looking at how we are going to eradicate violence against women,” said Nunes, whose organization has lobbied for the passage and reauthorizations of VAWA for decades . “It cannot be one sided. It cannot be siloed. We have to look at every industry.”

Jacobs encourages “believing survivors” as the first step.

“It’s important that we’re listening to [survivors], hearing them, believing them, and being there to provide support” so they can access safety and healing, Jacobs said.

If you or someone you know is experiencing sexual or domestic violence, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 to be connected with a confidential advocate free of charge 24/7. Get connected to resources near you and learn how to make a safety plan on NDVH’s website. The Legal Network for Gender Equity at the National Women’s Law Center also provides free legal assistance for survivors.

Support Provided By: Learn more

Educate your inbox

Subscribe to Here’s the Deal, our politics newsletter for analysis you won’t find anywhere else.

Thank you. Please check your inbox to confirm.