Key Social Norms Take-aways This study confirms that social norms justifying intimate partner violence to control women’s agency, sexuality, and reproductive autonomy are measurable, culturally salient, and linked to male perpetration of violence in Niger. Importantly, the norms that sanction violence when women challenge male authority—such as going out without permission or arguing—are more strongly associated with actual violence than norms around fulfilling wifely sexual and reproductive duties. This indicates that deviations from obedience norms may be seen as more threatening to patriarchal power structures. The validated scale offers a critical tool for identifying communities with high social norm support for intimate partner violence and for evaluating the impact of gender-transformative interventions.
Objectives The study aimed to develop and validate a social norms measurement scale—Intimate Partner Violence to exert control over Agency, Sexuality, and Reproductive Autonomy (IPV-ASRA) Social Norms scale—designed to assess the perceived community acceptability of intimate partner violence in rural Niger.
Methods Researchers used a psychometric approach called item response modeling, analyzing data from 559 married adolescent girls and their husbands in the Dosso region of Niger, collected in 2019. The study adapted a commonly used attitudes scale to measure second-order beliefs, capturing husbands’ perceptions of what others in their community believe about the acceptability of intimate partner violence. Validity and reliability of the scale were assessed using partial credit models and multidimensional scaling.
Results The final 5-item IPV-ASRA Social Norms scale demonstrated high internal reliability and strong construct validity. It was structured into two dimensions: norms supporting violence when wives fail to meet expected sexual and reproductive roles, and norms supporting violence when wives challenge husband authority. The scale effectively differentiated between men who had and had not perpetrated intimate partner violence, particularly on the authority-challenging dimension. No significant associations were found between scale scores and reproductive coercion, suggesting the need for more items related to reproductive autonomy norms.
Conclusions This brief, culturally grounded scale is a reliable and valid measure of social norms related to intimate partner violence and can serve as a valuable tool in research, monitoring, and evaluation. It highlights how norms around male authority and female obedience are central to the acceptability of violence, reinforcing the need for interventions that challenge these patriarchal norms to prevent intimate partner violence and promote gender equity.