مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد ارزش های اجتماعی و خشونت درونی شریک زندگی زنان – الزویر 2018

Social norms increasingly are the focus of intimate partner violence (IPV) prevention strategies but are among the least examined contextual factors in quantitative violence research. This study assesses the within-community, between-community, and contextual effect of a new measure of social norms (PVNS: Partner Violence Norms Scale) on women’s risk of IPV. Data come from baseline surveys collected from 1435 female, married, reproductive-age participants, residing in 72 wards in three districts (Chitwan, Kapilvastu, Nawalparasi) in Nepal who were enrolled in a cluster randomized trial testing the impact of a social behavioral change communication intervention designed to prevent IPV. Results of unconditional multilevel logistic regression models indicated that there was cluster-level variability in the 12-month prevalence of physical (ICC = 0.07) and sexual (ICC = 0.05) IPV. Mean PVNS scores also varied across wards. When modeled simultaneously, PVNS scores aggregated to the ward-level and at the individual-level were associated with higher odds of physical (ORind = 1.12, CI = 1.04, 1.20; ORward = 1.40, CI = 1.15, 1.72) and sexual (ORind = 1.15, CI = 1.08, 1.24; ORward = 1.47, CI = 1.24, 1.74) IPV. The contextual effect was significant in the physical (0.23, se = 0.11, t = 2.12) and sexual (0.24, se = 0.09, t = 2.64) IPV models, suggesting that the ward-level association was larger than that at the individual-level. Adjustment for covariates slightly attenuated the ward-level association and eliminated the contextual association, suggesting that individual perceptions and the collective community phenomena were equally strong predictors of women’s risk of IPV and should be taken into consideration when planning interventions. PVNS is a promising measure of social norms underpinning women’s risk of IPV and warrants further psychometric testing.

Introduction

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a global public health crisis, with approximately 30% of women aged 15 or older experiencing lifetime physical and/or sexual IPV. Regional estimates range from 16% in East Asia to 66% in Central Sub-Saharan Africa (Devries et al., 2013). Compared to unexposed individuals, survivors of IPV exhibit higher rates of adverse health conditions, including poorer mental and physical health, damaging coping behaviors and sexual and reproductive health conditions (Beydoun et al., 2012; Dillon et al., 2013; Clark et al., 2014; Clark et al., 2016; Stewart et al., 2016). The cost of IPV has been estimated at 5% of world gross domestic product (GDP), higher than any other form of collective or interpersonal violence, with economic effects ranging from 3% of GDP in high-income countries to nearly 15% of GDP in Sub-Saharan Africa (Hoeffler and Fearon, 2014). Globally attention has been drawn to the need for better statistics on the prevalence, causes, and consequences of IPV against women as a precursor to its elimination (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Statistics Division, 2014). The Change Starts at Home project (hereafter, Change) has begun to address this need by examining the epidemiology of IPV in Nepal and by testing a social behavioral change communication intervention designed to change norms and ultimately behavior to prevent the occurrence of IPV (Clark et al., 2017). Using baseline data from the Change project, this manuscript examines the association of social norms with individual women’s experiences of IPV and provides preliminary psychometric characteristics of the Partner Violence Norms Scale (PVNS). Social norms are informal rules derived from social systems that prescribe what behavior is expected, allowed, or sanctioned in particular circumstances. Individuals follows such a rule for behavior when they 1) perceive that a sufficient number of others follow the rule, 2) perceive that others expect the rule to be followed, and 3) recognize rewards for following the rule or social consequences of being perceived as deviating from the rule (e.g., the rule has legitimacy) (Bicchieri, 2006; Paluck and Ball, 2010; Mackie and Moneti, 2012). In other words, social norms have several necessary (but in themselves not sufficient) elements, including collective practices or descriptive expectations, which capture how people in a given community behave, and normative expectations, which capture social expectations that a behavior should be practiced. An important third element of social norms for some theorists is the idea that an individual’s perception of the social expectation for behavior also matter for adherence (Bicchieri, 2017). Social expectations are differentiated from personal beliefs or attitudes and may not align (Mackie and Moneti, 2012; Bicchieri, 2017).