Beyond measures of change in terms of prevalence and men’s attitudes attitudes and behaviours, a number of survey tools can capture attitudes held by families and community norms more widely. These can be valuable in evaluations of VAW prevention programs.
Measuring change in community attitudes
The Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale (IRMA) is a survey tool which has been designed to capture people’s attitudes towards sexual violence in particular the extent to which victims and survivors are blamed for the violence they experience. The tool includes a list of statements which aim to understand people’s attitudes towards rape, including whether it was its women’s fault, whether women tend to lie about being raped and whether perpetrators are really to blame.
Given a tendency among survey respondents to give answers which they know are more socially acceptable, it can be more effective to adapt the questions in this tool so they include statements which a more subtle, or which ask respondents about commonly held views rather than directly asking about their own beliefs. In this way, the tool can be used to capture shifting norms in relation to VAW.
Measuring change in community norms
A survey tool has been developed by Care Sri Lanka to evaluate their project on Redefining Norms to Empower Women (ReNEW) in the country’s tea plantations. The questions in this survey have been developed to measure shifts in gender-equal norms in relation to masculinity and IPV. Crucially, the survey has been designed so it can track the strength of influence these norms have over time.
In the survey, respondents are asked how widespread they think certain behaviours are in their neighbourhood, in relation to IPV and women’s coping mechanisms. Respondents are also presented with a set of statements about commonly held views within their neighbourhood. These relate to the acceptability and normalisation of violence and gendered norms in relation to violent behaviour, for example whether is natural and to be expected that men are violent.
Although developed for use in a particular context, this survey tool can be adapted for program evaluations in other contexts in order to capture shifts in the social acceptability of violence and the gender-based norms which encourage it.
