CANVAS (Children, attitudes, norms, violence, and society): do social meanings of violence affect development of adverse outcomes?

当暴力行为不被视为“暴力”时，它们是有害的吗？儿童暴力是一个普遍存在的人权、健康和发展挑战。 但是，在哪些暴力行为被视为正常、可接受和常见的问题上，国际上存在很大差异。 有大量证据表明，儿童时期遭受暴力会对健康、教育和其他方面产生长期不利影响，但这些证据绝大多数来自高收入、低发生率的环境，在这些环境中，暴力行为可能被认为是较不可接受的。 有一些跨文化的证据表明，当暴力行为被认为是规范性的时，这些行为可能对儿童产生较少的不良行为后果，但现有的研究受到样本量小的阻碍，而且关键的是，没有考虑到暴露于创伤的生物嵌入的作用。我们的跨学科团队将利用来自10个国家的三项正在进行的队列研究的现有数据，以及来自96个国家的横断面数据，探索社会规范和对暴力经历的态度如何影响暴力与各种健康，教育，劳动和生物标志物结果之间的关系。我们将1）概念化和定性和定量地探索儿童如何在一系列背景下定义正常，可接受和常见的暴力行为; 2）测量儿童时期暴露于“规范”身体，性和情感暴力的生物嵌入; 3）探索个人对“规范”暴力体验的认知评价和情感反应，以及生物嵌入是否根据这些而变化;（4）探讨家庭和学校暴力的社会规范如何影响个人态度和暴力-结果关系;（5）探讨社区、地区和国家间关于暴力的社会规范如何塑造家庭和学校规范、个人态度和暴力-结果关系。 所有这些目标都将通过与儿童、青少年咨询小组和致力于预防暴力领域的全球领导人的合作得到巩固和完善。这些小组将对研究设计、框架和结果解释提供建议，并将帮助我们批判性地思考如何构建我们的研究结果，使其影响和影响政策。我们的假设是，“规范性”暴力确实会造成伤害，即使是对生活在暴力常见和被接受的环境中的儿童也是如此。如果我们是正确的，我们的调查结果将强调关注日常和常见暴力行为的重要性，并可以为制定预防干预措施提供信息，并为决策者和捐助者的投资优先事项提供指导。

Are violent acts harmful when they are not perceived as ‘violence’? Violence in childhood is a pervasive human rights, health and development challenge. But there is a large international variation in what behavioural acts of violence are considered normal, acceptable and common. There is a large body of evidence showing long-term adverse health, education and other consequences of exposure to childhood violence, but this evidence is overwhelmingly drawn from high-income, lower prevalence settings where acts of violence may be considered less acceptable. There is some cross-cultural evidence that acts of violence may produce fewer adverse behavioural outcomes for children when those acts are perceived to be normative, but existing studies have been hampered by small sample sizes, and critically, have not considered the role of biological embedding of exposure to trauma. Our interdisciplinary team will take advantage of existing data from three ongoing cohort studies in ten countries, and cross-sectional data from 96 countries, to explore how social norms and attitudes towards violent experiences affect the relationships between violence and various health, education, labour and biomarker outcomes. We will 1) conceptualise and explore qualitatively and quantitatively how children define normal, acceptable and common acts of violence in a range of contexts; 2) measure the biological embedding of exposure to ‘normative’ physical, sexual and emotional violence in childhood; 3) explore individual cognitive appraisals and emotional reactions to experience of ‘normative’ violence, and whether biological embedding varies according to these; 4) explore how social norms about violence within families and schools affect individual attitudes and violence-outcome relationships, and 5) explore how of social norms in communities, regions and across countries about violence shape family and school norms, individual attitudes and violence-outcome relationships. All of these aims will be underpinned and refined by 6) collaboration with advisory groups of children, adolescents, and global leaders working in the field of violence prevention. These groups will advise on research design, framing, and interpretation of results, and will help us think critically about how to frame our findings so that they impact and influence policy.Our hypothesis is that ‘normative’ violence does in fact cause harm, even for children who live in contexts where that violence is common and accepted. If we are correct, our findings will underscore the importance of focusing on acts of violence that are routine and commonplace, and can inform the development of prevention interventions and guide investment priorities for policy makers and donors.