Measuring Domestic Violence: A New Approach

Domestic violence is a sensitive topic and as such we will find reticent respondents, i.e., those who give false answers with a nonzero probability when an honest answer could reveal that the person has committed or been exposed to a sensitive act. We compare the protocols used by the Peruvian Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) against a new design. The DHS is a nationally representative survey that includes a module to measure domestic violence and has been used in Peru for the past 14 years. Thus, by relying on the DHS methods and questions we will be able to frame our findings relative to well-established measures of violence nationwide. Our alternative method tries to capture violence against women in an innovative way, called list experiments, that is sometimes used in political science (Blair and Imai 2012). In list experiments subjects are provided with a list of statements and asked to answer how many of them are true. Subjects are not asked about which ones are true and therefore, list experiments could provide a more private environment to answer questions on sensitive topics more honesty. In this setting, the control group receives a list of innocuos statements (e.g., "I had breakfast this morning"). The treatment group is read the same list plus one additional sensitive question. In our case, this additional question is about domestic violence (e.g.,"My partner pushed me in the past 12 months"). The mean difference in the response between treatment and control is an estimate of the incidence of the sensitive question.

2014-08-04

2014-08-29

We will compare the incidence of domestic violence as measured by the DHS-style questions against the ones obtained from the list experiments. We will also explore whether the gradients of violence by socioeconomic status are similar under both types of measurement.

We randomly assigned bank clients to two arms. In the first arm, the control group, women were asked about three sets of statements without the sensitive questions. The sets contained 4 questions each. In the second arm, the treatment group, the sets had one extra question. These additional (and sensitive) questions were about sexual and physical violence. As described above, the participants answered how many statements were true and not which were true. To measure the incidence of violence in the control group, we use a DHS-style set of questions.

Three balls (2 white and one blue) were included in a black bag. The enumerator asked the bank client to extract (without looking) one ball. If blue, women were assigned to the treatment group, otherwise they were in the control.

As described above the randomization was done at the individual level.

No

There are 151 banks. However, as described elsewhere, randomization was conducted at the individual level.

We expect to interview around 1800 women.

Around 500 women will be in the treatment group and the rest in the control.

Because the randomization takes places a the individual level, we will apply the list experiment with the sensitive question to 500 women and the rest will answer the shorter list and the DHS-style questions about violence. This guarantees a MDE of 25% of a standard deviation with a power of 80%.