Domestic Violence and Forced Arranged Marriage in Uzbekistan: Measuring the Underreporting and Attitudes using List Experiments

Last registered on August 06, 2024

Pre-Trial

General Information

Title

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0014042

Initial registration date

July 25, 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

August 06, 2024, 10:51 AM EDT

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

Locations

There is information in this trial unavailable to the public. Use the button below to request access.

Request Information

Primary Investigator

Name

Mukhlisa Egamberdieva

Affiliation

University of Freiburg

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Nikita Zakharov

PI Affiliation

University of Freiburg

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2024-07-15

End date

2024-12-15

Keywords

Behavior, Crime, Violence, & Conflict, Gender

Additional Keywords

JEL code(s)

C83, J12, K42, O15

Secondary IDs

Prior work

This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.

Abstract

Domestic violence and forced arranged marriages in Uzbekistan remain taboo topics due to conservative national traditions and institutional landscape. Out of shame, societal stigma or fear, local women usually conceal incidents of domestic violence or their forced marriages. As a consequence, there is only limited data and a lack of statistics on this issue. We decided to tackle this problem concerning sensitive questions by conducting two lists of experiments among the female students of Tashkent University. Each experiment consists of two questions to estimate personal experience and attitudes on topics of domestic violence and forced marriage. The list experiment allows us to evaluate the underreporting rates on questions for both topics by comparing the frequency of item choices between the control and treatment groups and from answers to the direct questions in the control group. The design ensures the anonymization of the participants to protect the respondents

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Egamberdieva, Mukhlisa and Nikita Zakharov. 2024. "Domestic Violence and Forced Arranged Marriage in Uzbekistan: Measuring the Underreporting and Attitudes using List Experiments." AEA RCT Registry. August 06. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.14042-1.0

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

The intervention consists of an anonymous survey of women at the university. Participants will be randomly assigned to one of three groups. The first treatment group will be given questions of experience and attitude toward domestic violence against women. The second treatment group will be given questions about their experience and attitude toward forced marriages. The third control group will be given questions with only nonsensitive items in the list of experiment questions and direct questions on the two topics (domestic violence and forced marriage). This arrangement allows us to track the underreporting rates on questions for both topics.

Intervention Start Date

2024-08-01

Intervention End Date

2024-12-15

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Reported experience of domestic violence, attitudes towards gender roles, experience of forced marriages, perception of forced arranged marriages

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

The research utilizes an anonymous survey shared among female university students in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Female students are invited and randomly assigned to one of three groups: the first treatment group will be given questions about their experience and attitude toward domestic violence against women; the second treatment group will be given questions about their experience and attitude toward forced marriages; and the final control group will be given the same questions of first two groups without the sensitive parts and with direct questions on both topics. This research is set to answer the following questions: whether female students underreport domestic violence against women (Group A), and whether they underreport forced marriages (Group B). The list experiment approach would help to collect answers that women would not want to answer directly out of shame or fear.

Experimental Design Details

Not available

Randomization Method

Randomization will be done by an online platform automatically

Randomization Unit

The individual respondent acts as a unit of randomization. Each respondent to a survey will be independently assigned to one of the treatment groups or the control group

Was the treatment clustered?