Zambia Demographic and Health Survey 2001-2002 - Measure DHS

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN 12Mary Kazunga and Patrick Mumba Chewe12.1 INTRODUCTIONIn recent years, there has been increasing concern about violence against women in general, anddomestic violence in particular, in both developed and developing countries (United Nations GeneralAssembly, 1991). Not only has domestic violence against women been acknowledged worldwide as aviolation of the basic human rights of women, but an increasing amount of research highlights the healthburdens, intergenerational effects, and demographic consequences of such violence (Heise et al., 1994; Heiseet al., 1998; Jejeebhoy, 1998). Tolerance and experience of domestic violence are significant barriers to theempowerment of women, with consequences for women’s health, their health-seeking behaviour, theiradoption of a small family norm, and the health of their children. The ZDHS 2001-2002 included a series ofquestions that provide information on women’s experience of physical violence since age 15 and in the 12months preceding the survey. Furthermore, information was collected on women’s experience of sexualviolence. For all types of violence, questions were asked about the type of perpetrator(s) and the frequency ofthe violence in the last 12 months.In many settings, there is a culture of silence around the topic of domestic violence that makes thecollection of data on this sensitive issue particularly challenging. Even women who want to speak about theirexperience with domestic violence may find it difficult because of feelings of shame or fear. The need forestablishing rapport with the respondent, assuring confidentiality, and ensuring privacy during the interview,are all important for the entire survey, but are critical in ensuring the validity of the data on domestic violence.Complete privacy is also essential for ensuring the security of the respondent and the interviewer. Askingabout or reporting violence, especially in households where the perpetrator may be present at the time ofinterview, carries the risk of further violence. Given all of these concerns relating to the collection of data onviolence, the following steps were taken to ensure the validity of the data and the security of respondents andinterviewers:• Special training was provided to interviewers to sensitise them to the problem of domesticviolence in Zambia and to the specific challenges involved in collecting data on violence. Theneed to form rapport with the respondent and ensure privacy was emphasised both in teachingand practice.• The domestic violence questions were specially designed to allow the interviewer to continue theinterview only if privacy was ensured. If privacy could not be obtained, the interviewer wasinstructed to skip the questions and move on to the following section.• Only one eligible woman in each selected household was administered the domestic violencequestions. In households with more than one eligible woman, the woman administered thedomestic violence questions was randomly selected using a specially designed simple selectionprocedure. Thus, any security breach due to the presence of other persons in the household wasminimised by asking domestic violence only to one woman in each household.• Informed consent of the respondent was obtained for the survey at the start of the ZDHS 2001-2002 interview. In addition, at the start of the domestic violence questions, each respondent wasread a statement informing her that she was now going to be asked questions that could be quitepersonal in nature, because they explored different aspects of how women are treated in theirhouseholds. The statement assured her that her answers were completely confidential and wouldnot be told to anyone else, and that no one else in the household would be asked these questions.Violence against Women | 185