Background: Sexual violence-any sexual act committed against a person without freely given consentdisproportionately affects women. Women's first experiences of sexual violence often occur in adolescence. In Asia and the Pacific, 14% of sexually experienced adolescent girls report forced sexual debut. Early prevention with men that integrates a bystander framework is one way to address attitudes and behavior while reducing potential resistance to participation. Methods: This paper describes a study protocol to adapt RealConsent for use in Vietnam and to test the impact of the adapted program-GlobalConsent-on cognitive/attitudinal/affective mediators, and in turn, on sexual violence perpetration and prosocial bystander behavior. RealConsent is a six-session, web-based educational entertainment program designed to prevent sexual violence perpetration and to enhance prosocial bystander behavior in young men. The program has reduced the incidence of sexual violence among men attending an urban, public university in the Southeastern United States. We used formative qualitative research and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Map of the Adaptation Process to adapt RealConsent. We conducted semi-structured interviews with college men (n = 12) and women (n = 9) to understand the social context of sexual violence. We conducted focus group discussions with university men and stakeholders (n = 14) to elicit feedback on the original program. From these data, we created scripts in storyboard format of the adapted program. We worked closely with a small group of university men to elicit feedback on the storyboards and to refine them for acceptability and production. We are testing the final program-GlobalConsent-in a randomized controlled trial in heterosexual or bisexual freshmen men 18-24 years attending two universities in Hanoi. We are testing the impact of GlobalConsent (n = 400 planned), relative to a health-education attention control condition we developed (n = 400 planned), on cognitive/attitudinal/affective mediators, prosocial bystander behavior, and sexual violence perpetration. Discussion: This project is the first to test the impact of an adapted, theoretically grounded, web-based educational entertainment program to prevent sexual violence perpetration and to promote prosocial bystander behavior among young men in a middle-income country. If effective, GlobalConsent will have exceptional potential to prevent men's sexual violence against women globally.

From mid-1999From mid- to mid-2001, the authors carried out a qualitative study in rural Vietnam to explore relationships between gender equity and reproductive health. One of the study's objectives was to develop culturally appropriate indicators of women's empowerment, specific to the Vietnamese context. This paper describes the process of developing, testing, and refining the empowerment indicators, presents some of the findings, and discusses the methodological challenges that need to be addressed. The paper concludes by recommending a set of Vietnamspecific domains for assessing women's empowerment in the socio-economic sphere as well as in reproductive health.

This article describes an action research project designed to engage women, health providers, and communities to respond to gender-based violence (GBV) in Vietnam. Based on results from in-depth interviews and group discussions, it considers the extent to which the project approaches were empowering for abused women. The results underscore the problems entailed in introducing systematic screening for gender-based violence into government health facilities in the low-resource setting of Vietnam, the importance of combining ideational change and rights components with support for abused women, and the difficulty of engaging male perpetrators.

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This qualitative study examines attitudes toward recourse seeking and intervention in cases of intimate partner violence (IPV) against women in periurban Vietnam. The data come from 20 open-ended interviews, 4 focus group discussions, and 40 cognitive interviews conducted with married men and women. The findings indicate that many people hold contradictory beliefs and inconsistent attitudes about IPV and IPV intervention. Also, most informants know about the law against domestic violence in the abstract, but have limited knowledge of, and confidence in, potential mechanisms for recourse provided under the law. Strategies intended to undermine IPV and promote recourse seeking and intervention in Vietnam should be strategically designed to address ambivalence concerning IPV and recourse, and there should be a focus on changing norms associated with masculinity. Further efforts are needed to disseminate information about existing laws and mechanisms of recourse.