Social norms and beliefs about gender based violence scale: a measure for use with gender based violence prevention programs in low-resource and humanitarian settings.
Outcomes: Gender‑Based Violence
View SourceKey Social Norms Take-aways Social norms around victim-blaming, prioritizing family honor over survivor safety, and men’s authority to use violence against women strongly sustain GBV practices. Changing these norms requires engaging influential community members, addressing the stigma surrounding survivors, and promoting new norms that value women’s safety and equality. The scale offers a critical step forward in measuring and challenging these deeply entrenched norms in humanitarian settings.
Objectives The study aimed to develop and validate a brief, reliable, and valid scale to measure harmful social norms and personal beliefs related to gender-based violence (GBV) in low-resource and humanitarian settings. The goal was to provide a tool that can assess changes over time for GBV prevention programs like Communities Care.
Methods The study used a two-phase mixed-methods design. Phase 1 involved qualitative research, including 42 focus groups with 215 participants across Somalia and South Sudan, to identify social norms that sustain or challenge GBV. Phase 2 involved psychometric testing of the new Social Norms and Beliefs about GBV Scale among 602 randomly selected community members (aged 15 and older) in Somalia and South Sudan. Statistical analyses included factor analysis and tests for internal consistency and known-group validity.
Intervention Details This research was part of the evaluation of the Communities Care program, a UNICEF-supported initiative aimed at transforming harmful social norms that sustain GBV and promoting norms that support women’s and girls’ safety, equality, and dignity in humanitarian settings.
Results The 30-item scale (split into personal beliefs and injunctive social norms domains) showed strong psychometric properties, with three key subscales: “Response to Sexual Violence,” “Protecting Family Honor,” and “Husband’s Right to Use Violence.” The scale demonstrated good factor structure, internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha values between 0.69 and 0.77), and validity across different settings and gender groups. Women generally endorsed more harmful social norms than men, and significant differences were found between sites based on the level of GBV programming available.
Conclusions The Social Norms and Beliefs about GBV Scale provides a valid and reliable tool to assess shifts in social norms around GBV in low-resource and humanitarian contexts. It can help evaluate GBV prevention efforts and guide program design to effectively transform harmful community beliefs.
Norms Addressed
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