Overview

An instrument to study women’s exposure to emotional, physical, and sexual violence by an intimate partner. It is part of WHO’s Multi-Country Study on Women’s Health and Domestic Violence against Women conducted in 10 countries. Questions ask about emotional abuse, physical abuse, and sexual abuse.

If the respondents answered yes to any question, they were asked if the violence happened in the past 12 months. If they said yes to violence in the last 12 months, then they were asked to pick one of the following options: “once,” “a few times,” or “many times."

Additional questions on domestic violence cover issues such as control exerted by husbands/ male partners, if children witnessed the violence, and help was sought.

Scoring and Interpretation

The mean scores for each category of violence against women (emotional, physical, and sexual violence) from partners over the past 12 months are calculated by tallying positive responses questions, and then calculating the mean. Mean scores overall, and by category can be used to compare between time periods and areas.

Citation

Garcia-Moreno, Claudia, Jansen Henrica AFM, Ellsberg Mary, Heise Lori, and Charlotte H Watts. 2006. “Prevalence of intimate partner violence: Findings from the WHO Multi-Country Study on Women’s Health and Domestic Violence.” Lancet 368(9543): 1260–1269.

Context and Applications to Child Nutrition

Togo
Briaux, Justine, Yves Martin-Prevel, Sophie Carles, Sonia Fortin, Yves Kameli, Laura Adubra, Andréa Renk, et al. 2020. "Evaluation of An Unconditional Cash Transfer Program Targeting Children’s First-1,000–days Linear Growth in Rural Togo: A Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial." PLoS Medicine 17(11): e1003388.

Adaptations

N/A

Formative Research

Developed with several networks and expert groups and was based partly on the original and revised Conflict Tactics Scale.