Training Local Leaders to Prevent and Reduce Domestic Violence Evidence From Peru

Summary

Leaders in Action (LIA) is a norms-centered intervention that aims to reduce the acceptance and prevent the incidence of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in Peru by shifting social norms. This project takes advantage of the randomization of LIA across 250 villages.

LIA has two delivery models: a household-based module (HT), consisting of household training sessions by Community Health Volunteers, and a group-based module (GT) with education sessions in small gender-segregated groups organized by trained facilitators. The investigators will cross-randomize each approach to assess efficiency in reducing domestic violence and changing social norms about tolerance toward violence and gender roles. The study disentangles the impact of the two modules separately, as well as the interaction of the modules, while explicitly addressing methodological concerns of previous studies: reporting bias from self-reported domestic violence, limited statistical power and lack of long-term effects measures.

Potential and actual victims of IPV may profit from the intimate atmosphere of household visits, and that on the side of women, the transmission of information about IPV and services for victims may be facilitated in more private settings. At the same time, group-level workshops about harmful gender stereotypes and gender norms for women should, through social interactions and norm change, reinforce the effects of household-level treatments for women. The experiment will shed light on the potential mechanisms at play and the theoretical framework underlying IPV through extensive data collection and the calculation of heterogeneous effects. The goal of this project is to deliver new rigorous evidence to the scientific and policy community by experimentally evaluating the impact of a state-run IPV intervention and its main components. It provides insights into the effectiveness of distinct program components, assesses cost-effectiveness as well as potential to scale, and evaluates the mechanisms leading to the reduction of IPV.

Conditions

• Domestic Violence

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Leaders in Action: Household Treatment

The Household Treatment (HT) followed a door-to-door delivery approach: CHVs, in coordination with the local Women Emergency Center (CEM), offered 8 treatment sessions to households in the targeted sample. The sessions took place over a period of 1 to 2 months at the residences of the female participants. This intervention was subject to a second-stage randomization to include edutainment videos in its implementation for the HT only treatment arm. In 31 randomly selected HT villages, all targeted households watched the edutainment component as part of the HT program, and in the other 31 HT villages, only 50% of the targeted households were randomly assigned to watch the edutainment component.

BEHAVIORAL

Leaders in Action: Group Treatment

The group-based approach (Group Treatment, or GT) entailed 4 workshops involving various activities and group discussions. The group sessions directed at men had a slightly different curriculum than those directed at women, and always had at least one male CHV in the room facilitating the session. GT sessions took place over one month in each community in village community centers, schools, churches, or other communal spaces where village residents would often gather, and lasted for approximately two hours. The edutainment component was screened in every GT workshop.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)

  collaborator NIH

• Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab

  collaborator OTHER

• Innovations for Poverty Action

  collaborator OTHER

• Medical Research Council, South Africa

  collaborator OTHER

• Inter-American Development Bank

  collaborator OTHER

• Wellspring Philanthropic Fund

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• Duke University

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Erica Field, PhD · Duke University

• Livia Schubiger, PhD · University of Oxford

• Ursula Aldana, PhD · Instituto de Estudios Peruanos

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

SEQUENTIAL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

85 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2022-05-02

Primary Completion

2025-04-20

Completion

2025-04-30

Countries

• Peru

Study Locations