Media coverage of domestic violence: prolific online survey (final study)

We will recruit on Prolific French-based participants who are fluent in French. The sample will be balanced by sex to ensure an equal number of male and female participants.

Participants will be randomly assigned to a short message, in the form of an infographic, which provides figures on the prevalence of different types of domestic violence in France (treatment message) or figures on an unrelated topic, road safety in France (control message).

All participants will then be exposed to vignettes on different types of abuse in a relationship. We will then evaluate the respondents’ assessments of these situations.

2025-07-30

2025-08-31

We are interested in the following outcomes:

1) Respondents’ assessments of severity of the situation in the vignette,
2) Allocation of responsibility within the couple for the conflict presented in the vignette,
3) Willingness to seek help when faced with situations like in the vignette.
4) Willingness to support anti-violence organizations.

1) Severity. How would you rate the severity of this case?

Options: [On a scale from 1 to 5; 1 (Not severe at all) – 5 (Extremely severe)]


2) Responsibility. This question is directly related to the character' names in the vignette. It is slightly rephrased here to make it more understandable.

In a situation where two people in a couple have a serious conflict, who do you think is more at fault?

Options:
• Entirely Person A's fault
• Mostly Person A's fault
• Both are equally responsible
• Mostly Person B's fault
• Entirely Person B's fault

3) Help-seeking.

If you were aware of this situation, what would you do? You can select multiple options

Options:
I would confront the man
I would confront the woman
I would try to mediate between the couple
I would draw the attention of other people who could help
I would talk to the police
I would do nothing

4) Support anti-violence organizations.

One participant will be randomly selected to receive an additional €30. You may choose to donate some or all of this amount to an organization fighting against violence against women. If you are selected, we will donate according to your instructions. The rest will be paid to you directly if you are selected.

How much would you like to donate?

Options (Insert amount from 0 to 30. The rest will be paid to you directly if you are selected.)

Note: Compared to the pilot, the final study removes the closed-ended item on police reporting likelihood (“If you were faced with this situation, how likely would you be to contact the police?”). We focus instead on the multiple-choice behavioral intentions item, which includes ‘I would talk to the police’ as one response option.

After exposure to the treatment (infographic or control), participants will be asked how they feel at that moment. For each of the following emotions, they will rate the intensity on a 5-point Likert scale:

Sad, Worried, Optimistic, Determined to act, Uncomfortable, Powerless, Angry
Scale: 1 = Not at all, 5 = Extremely

This outcome was not included in the pilot but is added in the final study to capture emotional mechanisms underlying treatment effects.

We will also collect baseline sociodemographic data on respondents (gender, education, employment, cohabitation with partner, political orientation, beliefs in gender norms, past donation behaviour, trust in the government), and information on prior knowledge of prevalence of domestic violence in France or knowledge of the control group message. Compared to the pilot we added one question on past donation behaviour and one on trust in the government. We will explore if responses change by sociodemographic characteristics, prior knowledge, past donation behaviour or emotional response.

Participants will be randomized into either a treatment group or a control group.

Participants will be randomized into a treatment arm or a control group.

Treatment message, displayed as infographic:

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN FRANCE

In 2023, more than one woman per day in France was either killed or survived an attempted murder by her partner or ex-partner
1 woman/day

In 2023, 271,000 victims of domestic violence were recorded by French law-enforcement authorities – a 10% increase compared with the previous year

64% Physical violence
32% Verbal or psychological violence
4% Sexual violence

Reports have doubled since 2016, driven by heightened public awareness and improved police action.


Control message, displayed as infographic:

ROAD SAFETY IN FRANCE

In 2023, 3,431 people were killed on French roads — an increase compared with 2022. Another 233,000 people were injured.

3,431

Most road deaths were car occupants (45%)
Pedestrian deaths are rising again (451 deaths, +3% vs 2023)
Cyclist deaths remain high (7%)


We will then present all respondents with three different scenarios (vignettes), portraying various types of domestic violence, focusing on psychological and physical aggression. For each of these scenarios, we will evaluate the respondents’ assessments of severity, allocation of responsibility within the couple for the conflict, and willingness to seek help when faced with such situations.

We report below the three vignettes:

Vignette 1
Sophie and Marc have been married for five years. One evening, Sophie says she’s too tired to go to dinner at Marc’s parents.
Marc gets angry: he yells, accuses her of not caring about his family, throws a cushion at her, slams the bedroom door, and isolates himself for hours. He’s behaved this way many times before. Since the beginning, Sophie has known Marc is temperamental.

Vignette 2
Chloé and Adrien have been together for four years.
Adrien, who admits to being jealous, gets upset when Chloé says she’s going to dinner with colleagues.
Adrian complains that she didn’t mention it before. He wants to spend that evening with her and accuses “acting single”.
As Chloé walks toward the door, Adrien stands in front of it. He doesn't touch her, but his posture is rigid, and his tone threatening. He then steps aside, and she decides to stay home that night. Lately, this has occurred frequently.

Vignette 3
Camille and Luc dated for over a year, but then Camille ended the relationship. After a long silence, Luc messaged her, saying he missed her and had changed. She replied briefly, but then she made it clear she wasn’t interested. She had moved on and was seeing someone new
He threatened to share private photos from their past. Laura stopped replying, but the messages kept coming. Luc says she needs to understand he’s still hurt.

The randomization will be done on Prolific, a website for conducting online surveys.

The unit of randomization will be the individual subject.

No

N/A

For this intervention, we plan to collect roughly 900 observations.

We plan to collect roughly 450 observations per treatment arm.