Clinical Trial Details
— Status: Completed
Administrative data
| NCT number |
NCT03280680 |
| Other study ID # |
PR-10007 |
| Secondary ID |
|
| Status |
Completed |
| Phase |
N/A
|
| First received |
August 22, 2017 |
| Last updated |
September 10, 2017 |
| Start date |
November 1, 2010 |
| Est. completion date |
December 31, 2014 |
Study information
| Verified date |
July 2017 |
| Source |
International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh |
| Contact |
n/a |
| Is FDA regulated |
No |
| Health authority |
|
| Study type |
Interventional
|
Clinical Trial Summary
Bangladesh has the earliest patterns of marriage in the current developing world, high
adolescent fertility and high rates of spousal violence against women and girls. Women and
girls are often denied the right to choice or consent with respect to marriage, sex,
contraceptive use and childbearing. However, the denial of these rights and its consequences,
have not been adequately recognized and addressed in the context of the existing discourse or
interventions in Bangladesh on sexual and reproductive health or violence against women. It
is envisaged that the focus on realizing the right to choice and consent will bring about
change in attitudes and behaviors that could not be achieved through a single intervention.
A multi-sectoral action research-based intervention is proposed, involving access to
information about rights, available remedies and related referrals. Information will be
coupled with access to legal and health services. This action research project aims to create
a body of evidence. This multi-sectoral intervention in urban Bangladesh will highlight the
critical element of expressing or refusing consent and choice, through a strong network
between legal services, reproductive and sexual health service providers, human rights
advocates, and research organizations.
This project proposes to implement an integrated intervention with both primary preventions
and curative components based on the findings of the formative research. This project will
document the program implementation and impact through detailed quantitative and qualitative
evidence gathering, and carrying out an advocacy program to disseminate the results and bring
about change. It includes:
- designing culturally sensitive intervention activities with a joined up approach.
- a strong community mobilization campaign for creating an enabling environment for women
to live violence free lives.
- individual access to reproductive and sexual health services provided through health
clinics and legal services, with legal clinics providing information, advice and support
access to judicial remedies for redress in cases of serious violence.
- broader advocacy activities involving key stakeholders to reflect upon the findings and
understandings geneated by the study and their relevance for the administration of
justice delivery mechanisms.
Community engagement in the project will occur at multiple levels. At the local level the
project will engage through community mobilisation and service delivery with adolescent
girls, women and men living in urban slums of Dhaka city. It will also undertake targeted
advocacy programmes with the frontlines of the justice delivery system relevant to these
areas. Finally, it will engage at a national level with policymakers, researchers and key
stakeholders in the justice system and health through its advocacy related interventions,
drawing directly upon its findings.
Description:
Background Bangladesh has high rates of physical and sexual violence against women and girls.
Women and girls in Bangladesh are often denied the right to make decisions regarding
marriage, sex, and childbearing, yet neither the denial of these rights, nor their
consequences, have been adequately recognized and addressed in the context of ongoing
interventions to address violence against women. While higher court judgments, and key legal
and policy provisions recognize women's rights to exercise choice or the requirements of
obtaining their consent with respect to marriage, these are rarely applied or invoked in
practice.
In Bangladesh, more than 65 percent of girls are married before the age of 18. Child marriage
is associated with demands for dowry, with amounts increasing with age. Additionally, women
or girls' ability to exercise their right to consent or choice with regard to marriage, sex
and sexuality, is routinely denied. Child marriage represents a set of increased reproductive
health risks that are associated with limited knowledge and skills to negotiate adult roles
and diminished status in the marital home for an adolescent girl. One major reason for the
association with early marriage and negative reproductive health outcomes is that young age
at marriage for girls is associated with larger age differences that reduce her power within
the marital relationship. This may affect factors such as negotiating timing of births,
choice of contraception or use of maternal and child health (MCH) services. Child marriage
has highly detrimental sexual and reproductive health (SRH) consequences resulting in early
childbirth, and adverse effects on child and maternal nutrition and also maternal morbidity
and mortality. Child marriage and economic disempowerment may also be related to the high
levels of intimate partner violence (IPV) observed in Bangladesh.
Gender norms and perceptions about male predominance, strength and superiority further
exacerbate the problem. Evidence suggests that such presumptions of superiority and
acceptance of male prerogative and dominance, and corollary acceptability of violence as a
form of control, are associated with greater violence. The reason may be that in settings
where there is high acceptance of gender based violence the social costs of violence to
perpetrators is lower. There is also some research to show that in addition to such community
level attitudes, individual attitudes among women and men independently contribute to higher
risk of IPV. Thus, modifying individual attitudes and community norms related to gender based
violence is an important basis for behavioural change.
In Bangladesh adolescent girls and women are denied SRHR through patriarchal institutions and
long standing practices such as child marriage and force marriage, segregation of the sexes
and economic exclusion that relegate women to low status. Inadequate SRHR information and
services make men vulnerable to diseases. Gender education is normally geared towards women
and girls; thus men miss opportunities to become gender sensitive and responsible. While
Bangladesh has traditionally afforded women reasonably good access to family planning
services, the context of low status of women means that women are unable to exercise their
right to choose in decisions regarding marriage, sex and childbearing to the full extent of
their rights and ability. This project will seek to enhance people's ability to exercise
their SRHR by strategically expanding their knowledge and understanding of the notions of
full and informed consent and choice.
Child marriage and IPV are common in both urban and rural areas, with women in poor urban
areas are most at risk, yet most programs and projects aimed at empowering women remain in
rural areas. Data from Dhaka slums compared to non-slum populations as well as rural data
shows higher prevalence and acceptance of gender-based violence among women living in urban
slums. Migrant girls and women, particularly those living in urban slums, lack even the most
rudimentary social protection - thus being particularly vulnerable to violence.
Bangladesh has clear obligations under international law and the Constitution to ensure equal
treatment under the law to all individuals and to ensure freedom from violence as well as
effective remedies. An overarching framework of fundamental rights -- to liberty, personal
security equality and freedom of expression -- applies in the form of constitutionally
guarantees to all persons - women and men - within Bangladesh. However, the content and
application of specific laws often operate to deny or constrain the enjoyment of such rights
in practice. This is due in large measure to the limits of the law, and inherent paradoxes,
resulting from the continued prevalence of religion-based personal laws, which contradict and
constrain the ambit of operation of constitutional rights. The Constitution clearly prohibits
discrimination based on sex, and exhorts the state to ensure equal rights to men and women in
the state and public sphere, as well as guaranteeing the fundamental rights to personal
liberty, freedom of expression and freedom of religion. It also specifies that any laws which
violate such fundamental rights will be void.
It is widely recognised that interventions should employ a multi-sectoral approach and work
at different levels: individual, community, institutional, and laws and policies. Several
reproductive health initiatives have shown that communication programs can be effective in
improving knowledge and awareness. However, behavior change is more difficult to bring about.
These operations research studies hypothesize the need to bring about attitudinal change in
communities and among health care providers about the need to engage men in multiple ways to
improve the communities' SRH.
Programs to delay marriage timing include community mobilization, behaviour change
communication, educational incentives such as scholarships for girls and programs to promote
lifeskills and livelihood skills. In Bangladesh a program entitled "Raising the Age of
Marriage for Young Girls in Bangladesh" is one such project. A program in rural Bangladesh to
delay marriage by providing adolescent life skills and livelihood skills showed increase in
reproductive health knowledge, reduced school dropout and delayed marriage relative to girls
in control groups.
The Government of Bangladesh's (GoB) has several initiatives on VAW aims to improve services
for women survivors of violence and does so through targeting various different critical sets
of actors, including health personnel, police. The Police Reform Programme promises to
include a specific focus on addressing gender violence including training and collaboration
with civil society actors. While several leading women's rights, human rights and legal
service NGOs collaborate with the GoB programme, many others also run independent
initiatives, either singly or in collaboration with others, aimed at ending VAW and at
providing support and redress to survivors. This reluctance on the part of service providers
to use available institutional processes reflects that of women survivors themselves. As
research in Bangladesh has shown only 2% of the women physically assaulted by their husbands
have ever sought help from any institutional source. Moreover, they approached these sources
only when their situations became unendurable or the violence became life threatening or
children were at risk. The findings show that while providing appropriate services is
necessary, it is critical to make people aware of such services and to actively foster their
use of such services by creating an enabling environment in the community. It is equally
critical to make the services available within the justice sector more gender responsive.
Significance and Rationale Bangladesh is a signatory to international treaties to promote
gender equality. Ending VAW is an integral part of that agenda. The primary focus of the
current coalition is to reduce gender based violence beginning with the most vulnerable
groups—poor and adolescent girls living in Dhaka city. The project is clearly framed within
an understanding of the GoB's obligations to implement the provisions of key international
human rights treaties such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), in particular its understanding that the right to
equality within the family (Article 16) includes the right to choice with regard to 'if, when
and whom to marry', and its elaborate interpretation of the state's obligations to prevent
VAW (Declaration on Violence against Women, as well as General Recommendation 19 of the CEDAW
Committee).
The project is timed to seize a window of opportunity provided in part by recent national
democratic elections - which have resulted in clear government commitments to: 1) address
discriminatory laws and practices, including through taking up long-standing demands for
legal reform (e.g., the recent Cabinet approval of the domestic violence prevention and
protection bill); 2) strengthen existing institutional protections on VAW (victims support
centres, legal aid programme); and 3) increased space and a more enabling environment for the
operation of women's rights organisations and related service providers. The Project plans to
engage directly with key policy makers and justice sector institutions to press for legal and
policy reforms as necessary, and also to simultaneously reach out at the frontlines to press
for more effective enforcement of existing laws and rules safeguarding women's rights to
consent and choice. It will focus in part on enabling an informed understanding within key
justice sector institutions at a local level of the issues relating to investigation and
prosecution and prevention of VAW, as part of the roll out of the domestic violence law. The
evidence yielded by the project will be critical for engaging with ongoing legislative
advocacy initiatives on law and policy reform on women's rights.
Aims
This project aims to:
- Increase awareness among adolescent girls and women in urban slums regarding SRHR, and
the right to freedom from violence, in particular the right to consent and choice
- Develop a community environment by engaging and working with men to address denial of
the right to choice and consent of adolescent girls and women and violence against them
are less condoned
- Enable access to and more effective use of legal and health services by adolescent girls
and women in dealing with violence
- Reduce incidence of violence against adolescent girls and women due to the deterrent
effect of increased awareness among them of their rights and remedies in this
connection.
- Ensure law, policy and procedural reforms regarding access to justice, including with
respect to developing protocols and practices for investigation and prosecution of VAW,
procedures for registration of marriages which involve identification of the age of the
woman and of whether her consent has been obtained, and recognition of age and the right
to consent in court proceedings Research Design and Methods The proposed action research
project is a mixture of research and programmatic intervention activities with different
kinds of interventions targeted at different levels and research findings being fed back
into the program.
1. Awareness Raising: The main interventions will be awareness-raising in three
domains, on the rights of women and girls: i) to live a violence-free life; ii)
regarding SRH; and iii) legal provisions. In each area, a key focus would be on
women's rights to exercise choice and consent. The awareness raising activities
will be based on curriculum and materials developed jointly by project partners.
These will draw heavily upon existing local and global resources, and be tailored
to the needs of the given context.
The awareness raising activities will seek to engage groups such as women (aged 10
to 29); men (aged 18-35) and community leaders from Dhaka slums. Initial activities
will involve establishing adolescent and women's groups. Upon entry in the
community, Marie Stopes will organize separate groups of women and men (about
fifteen members each). About 450 women's groups and 150 men's groups will be
formed. Regular sessions will be held with each group with varying frequency. Women
will receive about five sessions per quarter, while men will receive one session
per quarter. These sessions will focus on discussions on SRHR issues and life
skills; right of a young woman to live a violence free life; and legal provisions
for addressing violence including rights within the family, and the rights to
consent and choice with regard to marriage, sex and childbirth.
Advocacy in these groups on the question of consent will be an important area for
enhancing women's and girls' capacity to combat and to seek redress for sexual
abuse, underage marriage and forced marriage, and child bearing. Skilled trainers
and paralegals will impart this training. As appropriate they will also provide
referrals to health care providers, and lawyers for legal assistance and assist
women who need to make complaints of violence to the police or to the courts and
accompany them to support them through court hearings.
2. One-Stop Service Centre (OSC): Awareness raising activities will be backed up by
provision of health, legal and other support services to women survivors of
violence from OSC. The services will be provided by Marie Stopes, BLAST, and Nari
Maitree. The existing Marie Stopes clinics near the slums will be focal points for
the dissemination of information and advice, service provision and referrals. Marie
Stopes will provide SRH services while BLAST will provide legal services to the
clients. Nari Maitree will make services available so that the community can take
part in the campaign activities from these service points.
3. Community Mobilisation and Community-wide Campaign: The above interventions will be
supplemented by community mobilisation efforts by Nari Maitree, which will commence
with the formation of community groups (e.g., local ward commissioners, leaders of
youth clubs, teachers etc) as well as training and orientation targeted to them.
Information and communication using relatively innovative means, such as
rickshaw/wall paintings, mobile phone messages/ring tones, and mobile van campaign,
etc will also be utilised as appropriate.The community-wide campaigns will be led
by Nari Maitree, applying the model already developed by the We Can Campaign.
4. Broader Advocacy: The intervention is partly linked to service delivery and
community mobilisation, and partly free-standing, will involve more broadly
targeted advocacy initiatives at a local and national level, which will engage all
project partners on the recognition and realisation of women's right to consent and
choice. Such advocacy will engage law makers and policy makers, and focus in
particular on key actors within the justice system, i.e., police, prosecutors,
social workers, health professionals and the judiciary.
Evidence gathering through collaborative action research The project has been designed to
enable a more joined up approach to service delivery targeted to the most vulnerable for
ensuring effective access to information and health services and justice to ensure that those
needing advice and assistance are able to access appropriate services. The research component
enable capacity building of the service delivery organizations to fine tune the existing
services to better meet the needs of the people. The quantitative and qualitative evidence
generated by the program will help to (i) identify vulnerable populations and the nature of
their vulnerabilities to inform the intervention approach; (ii) enable designing a culturally
sensitive appropriate set of initervention activities; (iii) monitor program inputs and
document the activities in the interventions; (iv) give constant feedback into the program;
(v) assess impact to understand what works and what does not work; and (vi) inform advocacy
messages.
Thus, the project aims to ensure that the findings from on the ground interventions are fed
into learning, which can be disseminated through professional and ongoing education for the
relevant policy makers including judges, prosecutors and lawyers and police. This will ensure
that the health education, services as well as justice systems are sensitised to the real
needs of the poorest and most vulnerable users, and at the same time to use such information
to develop focused and specific recommendations for policy and programmatic or procedural
reforms.
Baseline and Scoping Study, and Impact Evaluation The research will be carried out through a
scoping study and baseline survey in the first year, and an impact evaluation at the end of
the third year. In particular, the baseline and scoping study will focus on the influence of
prevalent norms and the potential for diffusion dynamics in changing normative structures and
breaking rules. The impact evaluation will allow comparison between intervention and control
areas in order to measure changes due to intervention.The study will be carried out using
mixed methods of qualitative and quantitative data collection, using separate sample pre-test
post-test control group design.
Qualitative data collection: Qualitative data will be collected for the scoping study and for
evaluation of the intervention. Qualitative data will inform the design and questionnaire
wording for the quantitative study, to interpret quantitative results. Tools for qualitative
data collection will invovle 12 Key Informant Interviews (KII) (5 males and 7 females), 15
Focus Group Discussions (FGD) (3 with unmarried young women, 3 with married young women, 3
with unmarried young men, 3 married young men and 3 with community leaders) and 61
Indepth-Interviews (IDI) (20 with unmarried young women, 25 with married young women, 7 with
unmarried young men and 9 with married young men). in the baseline study. Potential key
informants are female and male NGO workers from the study site and women and men from the
slums who have first-hand knowledge regarding the study population and are knowledgeable in
the area this study is interested in exploring. The selection of informants for each kind of
data collection will be opportunistic. In the endline study, there will be 16 KIIs (8 with
females and 8 for males), 10 FGDs (2 with unmarried young women, 2 with married young women,
2 with unmarried young men, 2 married young men and 2 with both females and males
irrespective of their marital status), 116 in-depth interviews (34 with unmarried young
women, 34 with married young women, 24 with unmarried young men and 24 with married young
men).
Quantitative data collection: The baseline and endline survey will be cross-sectional and
will be conducted among 4,212 adolescent girls and women between the ages of 15 and 29; and
1,458 young and adult men ages between 18 and 35 living in the sample area at the time of the
survey. Survey sample will include 15-19 years old unmarried and married girls; 20-29 married
and unmarried females; and 18-35 years old married and unmarried males. Samples will be drawn
separately for these three groups of respondents. The study will have 3-arms: (a) Strategy 1:
group level awareness raising activities with females and males, plus a community wide
campaign and one-stop service centres; (b) Strategy 2: group level awareness raising
activities only with females plus a community wide campaign and one-stop service centres; and
(c) Strategy 3: community wide campaigning activities coupled with one-stop service centres.
Thus, there will be no "blank" or "no intervention" control condition. The design will allow
comparison across male involvement versus no male involvement in strategy 1 versus strategy
2; and added advantage of reaching females on top of community campaigning and onestop
service centres in comparison between strategy 2 and strategy 3.
Sample selection: The respondents will be selected from slums in the vicinity of three Marie
Stopes clinics in Dhaka. Each of the three clinic site slums will be divided into 51, 27, and
27 non-contagious clusters of 15-19 year old females; 20-29 year old females and 18-35 years
males, respectively. These clusters, then, will be randomly assigned to the three strategies.
Male respondents will not be selected from the same household because their exposure to the
survey may make the females vulnerable. There are different sizes of slums according to
population and area, which may impact on violence towards women at different levels.
Therefore, the study will incorporate both large and small slum areas in drawing sample
according to size of the population.
Appropriately trained same sex interviewers will recruit respondents only after receiving
consent or assent when appropriate. Before entering into the slums and households, permission
will be taken from the gatekeepers, and household heads. The survey questionnaire draws
heavily upon widely used standard research tools from sources such as the WHO multi-country
study on Women's Health and Domestic Violence.
Study Area The study will be conducted in areas within urban slums of Dhaka city. The
intervention will be carried out in communities surrounding three Marie Stopes clinics in
Dhaka located in Mohammadpur, Mohakhali, and Jatrabari. According to Marie Stopes records
there are 4 slums in Mohammadpur; 5 slums in Mohakhali and 10 slums in Jatrabari in the
vicinity of these clinics. Marie Stopes estimated a total population of 51,514 in these
slums. Applying the proportion of women aged 10 to 24 found in Dhaka slums by the Urban
Health Survey we estimated about 8,336 women and girls to be residing in these slums.
Project Beneficiaries: The project will primarily affect some 6,750 slum adolescent girls and
women, while the secondary group affected would be all the women (slum and non-slum) in the
intervention area during the intervention period in Dhaka. For some of the interventions such
as nation-wide media campaign or sensitization of key actors in the judiciary system a much
broader section of Bangladeshi women will be the beneficiaries. In order to create an
enabling environment for girls and women to practice their rights to freedom from violence,
this project will also engage young men. Thus, in Dhaka 2,250 young men will be directly
involved. These men will be encouraged to sensitize other members of the community, including
the community leaders. Thus, the ultimate target becomes the entire community consisting of a
total (slum and non-slum) population of around 128,785.
Sample Size Calculation and Outcome (Primary and Secondary) Variable(s). Sample sizes for
this study are calculated assuming that treatment effects will be observed by measuring
change in key outcomes between baseline and endline surveys and by comparing treatment and
control groups. The sample also takes into account an extensive baseline survey that will
allow the statistical analysis to control for known factors associated with the outcomes.
Sample for the quantitative survey has been calculated using the three-level multi-site
cluster randomized trial design. In this design, individuals are nested within clusters and
the clusters are randomly assigned to the three strategies 1 or 2 or 3. Using the Optimal
Design (OD) software, assuming 5% significance level, 80% power, intra-class correlation of
0.01, and cluster size of 15 respondents, 153 female groups of 15-19 years old (51 groups per
site); 81 female groups of 20-29 years old (27 groups per site); and 81 male groups of 18-35
(27 groups per site) are needed to detect a minimum detectable effect size (MDES) of 45% to
55% (Table 3). Allowing for 20% oversampling to group's size in order to address 5%
non-response and 15% migration at the endline, the cluster size increases to 18 for which the
sample size increases from 4,725 to 5,670 (4,212 females and 1,458 males).
Ethical considerations There are number of ethical considerations that need to be made when
conducting research on VAW in families. The CIOMS International Guidelines for Ethical Review
of Epidemiological Studies (1991) and the WHO recommendations (2001) are being adhered to in
the development of this Protocol.
Do no harm and respect adolescent girls' and women's decisions and choices Particular care
will be taken to ensure that all questions about violence and its consequences are asked
sensitively, in a supportive and non-judgmental manner. Interviewers and program staff will
be trained to be aware of the effects that the questions may have on the informant and, if
necessary, will terminate the interview. Care has been taken when designing the
questionnaires and interview guides to try to carefully and sensitively introduce and enquire
about adolescent girls' and women's experiences of violence. Each interview or session will
aim to end in a positive manner to provide the participant with a positive outlook and
reinforces her coping strategies.
Emotional support and skills Given the prevalence of VAW, many interviewers and program staff
would either have experience of IPV themselves or have been affected by it in some way. For
this reason, the training will be explicitly designed to provide an opportunity for them to
reflect on their own experiences with abuse. At all times interviewers will be informed that
they have the option of withdrawing from the project. Trainings will also include how to be
empathetic and supportive, allowing the participant time to take a break and giving her the
opportunity to reschedule or terminate the interview or discussion. At all interviews,
participants will be informed orally of the purpose and nature of the study, why and how s/he
has been selected, what is expected from the participant, privacy, anonymity and
confidentiality, the expected benefits of the study, future use of the data, the principles
of compensation and the right of the participants not to participate and to withdraw from the
study if they so wish. Details for some of these areas of informed consent are given below
Oral consent and assent Verbal consent will be taken on the following ground: 1) Request for
signature on the consent form may arouse the respondent's suspicion; 2) The issue of
maintaining confidentiality is further challenged when the respondent's signature is placed
on the form; 3) It is expected that a major proportion of the respondents will be
non-literate. In this situation asking for a thumbprint would further raise suspicion. In
order to interview minors (aged below 18) consent from guardians would normally be sought.
However, in a sensitive study such as this taking consent from potential perpetrators
(fathers, brothers, husbands, in-laws) of abuse would further jeopardize the girls' and
women's safety as well as the principle of confidentiality employed in the study. This is why
oral consent from a guardian (if available) will be sought first introducing the study as a
study of health and life experiences of young women. Then the full consent procedure will be
followed with the young women in question. Assent form will be used to interview minors.
Voluntary participation Participation in the study will be on a voluntary basis. No
inducements will be made. The participant will be free not to participate in the study; to
terminate the interview at any point, and to skip any questions that s/he does not wish to
respond to. As a token sign of appreciation SAFE one-stop services (legal and health) will be
offered to all study participants; they will receive free treatment, free medicine that is
available in the Marie Stopes clinics and travel allowance of TK. 60. This is applicable only
for the first visit and at any time throughout the project period.
Confidentiality Much of the information provided by the participants will be extremely
personal. The dynamic of a violent relationship is such that the act of revealing the painful
details of abuse to someone outside the family nucleus could provoke another violent episode.
As part of the consent procedure, the participant will be informed that the data collected
will be held in strict confidence.
Mechanisms to attend to researchers' and field workers' needs The high prevalence of VAW
worldwide means that, almost without exception, one or more project staff will have been a
direct target, or have familial experiences of violence. While this may improve the
interviewers' skills and empathy, the process of being involved in the study may awaken
images, emotions, internal confusion and conflict. These reactions may affect their ability
to work, may have a negative impact on their health, and may create tension in the home.
During the fieldwork, regular meetings will be held with interviewers for emotional
debriefing. In contrast to more technical meetings that focus on evaluating progress with
data collection or program and other aspects of project logistics, these debriefing sessions
will aim to provide staff with an opportunity to discuss their own feelings about the work.
Physical safety of informants and researchers
The physical safety of study participants and project staff from potential retaliatory
violence by the abuser is of prime importance. If the focus of the project becomes widely
known, this may place the participant or the staff member at risk of violence, either before,
during or after the project. For this reason, the following measures will be adopted to
ensure that the research topic does not become widely known:
- The survey will be framed as a survey of young women's health and life experiences, and
will be introduced at the local and household level in this manner. The interviewers
will carry a separate dummy questionnaire for use in situations.
- Interviews and discussion sessions will only be conducted in a private setting. Only
children under 2 will be permitted to be present. If necessary, locations outside the
household where the interview can be conducted in private will be identified.
- The participant will be free to reschedule (or relocate) the interview or session to a
time (or place) that may be more safe or convenient for her.
- Interviewers will be trained to terminate or change the subject of discussion if an
interview or discussion is interrupted by anyone. During the interview, the interviewer
will forewarn the respondent that she will terminate or change the topic of conversation
if the interview is interrupted, and will be able to skip to these questions at any
point if needed.
Harmful publicity During dissemination of study findings care will be taken to highlight the
extent to which violence against women is cross cutting, existing in all communities and
socioeconomic groups. Particular attention will be paid to ensuring that the findings are not
used as a means to describe one setting or group as being worse than another.
