Private But Misunderstood? Evidence on Measuring Intimate Partner Violence Via Self-Interviewing in Rural Liberia and Malawi

42 Pages Posted: 20 Dec 2021 Last revised: 1 Nov 2024

See all articles by David Sungho Park

David Sungho Park

University of California, Santa Cruz

Shilpa Aggarwal

Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad

Dahyeon Jeong

World Bank

Naresh Kumar

UC Santa Cruz

Jonathan Robinson

University of California, Santa Cruz

Alan Spearot

University of California, Santa Cruz

Date Written: December 2021

Abstract

Women may under-report intimate partner violence (IPV) in surveys due to a variety of social and psychological factors. To understand if anonymized interviewing can allay this concern, we conduct a measurement experiment in rural Liberia and Malawi in which women were asked IPV questions via either self-interviewing (SI) or face-to-face interviewing (FTFI) with an enumerator. We find that about a third of women incorrectly answer basic screening questions over SI, and that it generates placebo effects on innocuous questions even for those who "pass" screening. Because the probability of responding "yes" to any specific IPV question is less than 50%, and that IPV is typically reported as an index (reporting yes to at least one question in a category of violence), such misunderstanding will tend to increase IPV reporting. In Malawi, we find that SI dramatically increases reported IPV, with the incidence of any type of IPV increasing by 13 percentage points on a base of 20%; in Liberia, we find an insignificant and modest increase of 4 percentage points on a base of 39%. Our results suggest SI may spuriously increase reported IPV rates.

Suggested Citation

Park, David Sungho and Aggarwal, Shilpa and Jeong, Dahyeon and Kumar, Naresh and Robinson, Jonathan and Spearot, Alan, Private But Misunderstood? Evidence on Measuring Intimate Partner Violence Via Self-Interviewing in Rural Liberia and Malawi (December 2021). NBER Working Paper No. w29584, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3989592

David Sungho Park (Contact Author)

University of California, Santa Cruz

1156 High St
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
United States

Shilpa Aggarwal

Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad ( email )

Hyderabad, Gachibowli 500 019
India

Dahyeon Jeong

World Bank ( email )

1818 H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20433
United States

Naresh Kumar

UC Santa Cruz ( email )

Santa Cruz, CA 95064
United States

Jonathan Robinson

University of California, Santa Cruz ( email )

1156 High St
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
United States

Alan Spearot

University of California, Santa Cruz ( email )

1156 High St
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
United States

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