Witness intervention in cases of violence against women: The effect of soft reporting

Last registered on April 02, 2024
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Witness intervention in cases of violence against women: The effect of soft reporting
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0013262
Initial registration date
March 30, 2024

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
April 02, 2024, 11:21 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country
Spain
Region
Navarre

Primary Investigator

Name
Sara Martinez-de-Morentin
Affiliation
Universidad Publica de Navarra
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Ariadna Garcia-Prado
PI Affiliation
Universidad Publica de Navarra
Contact Investigator
PI Name
Rebeca Echavarri
PI Affiliation
Universidad Publica de Navarra
Contact Investigator
PI Name
Fernanda Gutierrez-Navratil
PI Affiliation
Universidad de Oviedo
Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2024-03-12
End date
2024-04-30
Keywords
Behavior, Crime, Violence, & Conflict, Gender
Additional Keywords
Violence against women, intimate partner violence
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial is based on or builds upon one or more prior RCTs.
Abstract
Since 2018, in Spain, victims or witnesses of situations of violence against women can report to social services instead of the police without having to identify and denounce the aggressor, an option known as soft reporting. Soft reporting enables victims to access legal, economic, and psychological support services. It is expected that the availability of soft reporting will help reduce costs and overcome barriers to reporting, but there is not administrative data that enables to evaluate this.

In a previous RCT (AEARCTR-0011814), participants in one of the treatments had to decide whether they would intervene in a situation of violence against women under conditions simulating the hard reporting option that witnesses commonly face in real settings: reporting to the police, identifying themselves, and identifying the aggressor to process a formal complaint. In the current experiment, we present the participants with the same hypothetical situation used in the previous RCT, but we change the intervention option from hard to soft reporting. By comparing participants' decisions in the two groups, we can test if soft reporting actually increases witness intervention.


External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Echavarri, Rebeca et al. 2024. "Witness intervention in cases of violence against women: The effect of soft reporting." AEA RCT Registry. April 02. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.13262-1.0
Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
We perform an online experiment on individual decisions, embedded in an official Statistical Operation of the Government of Navarre (Spain), included in its 2021-2024 Statistics Plan (OE 2000473). We have access to a random representative sample of the population in
Navarre, aged 18-47 and selected from the census.
Intervention Start Date
2024-03-12
Intervention End Date
2024-04-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Willingness to intervene among witnesses of violence against women in a soft-reporting scenario. Soft reporting involves reporting the situation of violence to social services without the need to identify themselves or the aggressor to file a formal complaint.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
Information about individual characteristics that may affect willingness to intervene: economic preferences, social behaviour and other socio-demographic variables.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Participants will read a realistic and well-explained hypothetical situation (a vignette) and, given this
context, will choose whether to intervene or not.
Experimental Design Details
Participants will read a realistic and well-explained scenario depicting violence against women (a vignette), and based on this context, they will decide whether to intervene. Intervening entails informing social services about the situation of violence without the requirement to disclose their identities or the aggressor's identity to file a formal complaint. There is only one treatment arm since we will correlate the findings of this study with those of a previous one (AEARCTR-0011814) conducted using the same design, differing only in the implications of intervention.

Each participant will receive an initial endowment of 30 euros. Participants who choose to intervene will give up part of the endowment (25 euros) in favor of a well-recognised NGO that helps victims of VAW. Those who decide not to intervene will keep the total endowment for themselves. To enrich our capacity to interpret the results of this experiment, we complement this approach with a survey. Our survey extracts information about the preferences (e.g., risk attitudes) and beliefs of individuals, which allows us to examine mechanisms behind the willingness to report VAW.
Randomization Method
Participants have been randomly selected from the population census of the Navarre region. All participants will be assigned to the single treatment arm of the experiment.
Randomization Unit
Individual
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
250 individuals
Sample size: planned number of observations
250 individuals
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
250 individuals asigned to the single treatment arm
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Ethics Committee of the Universidad Publica de Navarra
IRB Approval Date
2022-06-29
IRB Approval Number
N/A
Analysis Plan

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials