Influences of Women's Empowerment on Marriage and Violence in Bangladesh

描述（由申请人提供）：本研究的目的是阐明孟加拉国农村妇女赋权与其遭受亲密伴侣暴力（IPV）风险相关的个人和社区层面机制。它采用了四种创新的方法战略来实现这一目标。首先，许多关于妇女赋权的现有研究使用了相对较少的项目来捕捉这一概念的狭窄范围。该项目建立在先前美国国立卫生研究院关于孟加拉国妇女赋权的发展赠款（#1R21HD053580 - 01 PI Schuler）的基础上，纳入了一套全面且符合背景的妇女赋权指标。其次，先前关于IPV态度和规范的研究使用了范围狭窄的项目来捕捉这些概念，这些项目可能被调查对象理解得不同（错误）。本文采用了通过美国国立卫生研究院的另一项发展研究资助（#1R21HD058173-01 PIs Schuler和young）开发的关于孟加拉国农村IPV态度的新措施。第三，以往关于语境对IPV影响的研究缺乏对IPV和社区语境的测量。该项目采用了一套全面的措施来确定社会性别背景的特征，这将适当地确定赋予妇女权力的个人一级进程。它还包括一套全面的措施，捕捉妇女所经历的IPV的类型和时间。最后，该项目结合了定量和定性方法的优势，以加强对个人、夫妻和社区各级变量运作和相互作用的机制的解释，从而影响妇女遭受IPV的风险。定量数据收集将结合对3500名新婚妇女（RMW）的三波（基线加两次随访）小组调查和对1500名已婚男性（EMM）和1500名已婚女性（EMW）的横断面调查，在基线进行。从RWM、EMW和EMM中获得的调查数据将有可能产生3类指标，以在多层次分析框架中检验研究假设：村层面和个人层面的自变量，个人层面IPV结果和控制变量。定性数据将包括：1)赋权程度较高的年轻已婚女性的生活史叙述，其中赋权和IPV在其生活中的演变同时被引出；2)与年轻已婚男性、年轻已婚女性（结婚2-6年）以及年长男性和女性进行小组讨论。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The objective of this study is to clarify the individual- and community-level mechanisms by which a woman's empowerment is associated with her risk of experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV) in rural Bangladesh. It employs four innovative methodological strategies to achieve this objective. First, much of the existing research on women's empowerment has used relatively few items to capture a narrow range of dimensions of this concept. This project builds on a prior NIH developmental grant on women's empowerment in Bangladesh (#1R21HD053580 - 01 PI Schuler) by incorporating a comprehensive and contextually appropriate set of indicators of women's empowerment. Second, prior research on attitudes and norms about IPV has used a narrow range of items to capture these concepts, and such items may have been variously (mis)understood by the survey respondents. Here, new measures of attitudes regarding IPV in rural Bangladesh, developed through another developmental research grant from NIH (#1R21HD058173-01 PIs Schuler and Yount) are used. Third, prior studies of contextual influences on IPV have suffered from limited measures of both IPV and community context. This project uses a comprehensive set of measures to characterize the gendered social context, which will appropriately situate individual-level processes of women's empowerment. It also includes a comprehensive set of measures that capture the type and timing of IPV that women experience. Finally, the project combines the strengths of quantitative and qualitative methods to enhance interpretation of the mechanisms by which individual-, couple- and community-level variables operate and interact to influence a woman's risk of experiencing IPV. The quantitative data collection will combine a three-wave (a baseline plus two follow-ups) panel survey of 3500 recently married women (RMW) with one cross-sectional survey, administered at baseline, of 1500 ever-married men(EMM) and 1500 ever-married women (EMW). The survey data elicited from RWM, EMW, and EMM will make it possible to generate 3 categories of indicators to test the study hypotheses in a multilevel analytic framework: independent variables at both the village level and individual levels, individual- level IPV outcomes, and control variables. Qualitative data will consist of 1) life history narratives of young married women with relatively high levels of empowerment in which the evolution of empowerment and IPV in their lives are simultaneously elicited; and 2) group discussions with young married men, young married women (married 2-6 years), and older men and women. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This study uses a combination of research methods to better understand the relationship between women's empowerment and intimate partner violence in a society where gender norms are in rapid flux, and the ways that characteristics of the communities in which women live modify this relationship. Elucidation of the social processes involved will provide a better basis for developing interventions to mitigate the elevated risks of violence against women and maximize the protective factors associated with transitions toward greater gender equality.