Prevention, Cessation, or harm reduction: Heterogeneous effects of an intimate partner violence prevention program in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo

Abstract

Introduction The Engaging Men through Accountable Practice (EMAP) program is a series of facilitated group discussions for men in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that sought to reduce intimate-partner violence and transform gender relations. While a previous analysis found null impacts on women’s experience of past-year intimate-partner violence (IPV), these average results obscure important heterogeneity. The study objective is to analyze the effects of EMAP on subgroups of couples based on their initial levels of IPV. Methods We use two rounds of data (baseline and endline) collected from adult men (n = 1387) and their female partners (n = 1220) as part of a two-armed, matched-pair, cluster randomized controlled trial conducted between 2016 and 2018 in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Loss to follow up was low as 97% of male and 96% of female baseline respondents were retained at endline. We define subgroups of couples based on their baseline reports of physical and sexual IPV using two different methods: i) subgroups determined by binary indicators of violence at baseline, and ii) Latent Class Analysis (LCA). Results We find that the EMAP program led to a statistically significant decrease both in the probability and severity of physical IPV among women who experienced high physical and moderate sexual violence at baseline. We also find a decrease in the severity of physical IPV (significant at the 10% level) among women who experienced both high physical and high sexual IPV at baseline. Findings indicate that the EMAP program was more effective at reducing IPV perpetration among men who were the most physically violent at baseline. Conclusion These results suggest that men who perpetrate violence against their female partners with greater severity than average may be inspired to reduce their use of violence through participatory discussion with less violent men. In contexts of endemic violence, programs like EMAP can lead to a meaningful short-term reduction in harm to women, perhaps even without transforming prevailing norms about male superiority or the acceptability of IPV. Trial registration Trial registration number: NCT02765139.

Impacts of an abbreviated personal agency training with refugee women and their male partners on economic empowerment, gender-based violence, and mental health: a randomized controlled trial in Rwanda

“…This nding is in line with ndings by Dunkle et al (2020) (13), who showed that at 24-months post followup, a couple intervention impacted IPV only amongst those who reported experiencing IPV at baseline. Moreover, data from the Democratic Republic of the Congo found a decrease in the severity of physical IPV among women who experienced IPV at baseline a result of a series of facilitated male group discussions (40). Similarly, Angelucci et al (2022) (17) nd impacts of their cash plus empowerment intervention on IPV only amongst those at high risk for IPV at baseline.…”