Measuring violence against women amidst war and displacement in northern Uganda using the "neighbourhood method"

Abstract

Gender-based violence-particularly intimate partner violence-is commonplace in postconflict Uganda. The neighbourhood method provides a promising approach to estimating human right violations in humanitarian settings.

Participation as Principle and Tool in Social Reintegration: Young Mothers Formerly Associated with Armed Groups in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Northern Uganda

“…In Uganda, 57% of 204 women in displacement camps were found to have suffered domestic violence, 41% marital rape, and 5% rape by a stranger (Stark, Roberts, Acham, Boothby & Ager, 2010). Community leaders in northern Uganda have argued that a focus on formerly abducted girls by the international community has rendered unacknowledged the victimhood of never-abducted girls who have been raped or forced into marriage with Uganda People's Defence Force soldiers, many of whom also become young mothers as a result (Shanahan & Veale, 2010).…”

Trade-offs in Using Indirect Sampling to Measure Conflict Violence

“…In the studies by Roberts et al 5,6 and Silva and colleagues, 7 the assumption of complete and accurate secondary reporting was manifested in the assumption that respondents would disclose all deaths among individuals they knew and that key community informants and subsequent referrals would provide access to the full social network of the affected population. Researchers of both studies found that their results were sensitive to the choice of key informants.…”

“…4(pX) In conflict settings, indirect sampling can provide many advantages over the passive surveillance and purposive sampling often adopted by human rights monitors, but it also has its own disadvantages. In this Commentary, we briefly illustrate these tradeoffs in 3 uses of indirect sampling to measure the health consequences of armed conflict: sexual violence in Uganda, 5 mortality during several diverse armed conflicts, 6 and counterinsurgency deaths in Northern India. 7 Stark and colleagues 5 measured sexual violence in Uganda using an indirect neighborhood sampling method, in which women, in camps for internally displaced persons, reported sexual violence experienced by themselves, their sisters, and their neighbors to guide intervention programs and advocacy.…”

“…7 Stark and colleagues 5 measured sexual violence in Uganda using an indirect neighborhood sampling method, in which women, in camps for internally displaced persons, reported sexual violence experienced by themselves, their sisters, and their neighbors to guide intervention programs and advocacy. 5 This method enlarged the sample size by a factor of 8 without increasing the number of interviews.…”

Challenges to Researching Childhood Sexual Violence in Indonesia

“…This study piloted the use of the 'neighborhood method' (Stark et al, 2009;Stark, Warner, Lehmann, Boothby, & Ager, 2013), in the Nusa Tenggara Timur province among a sample of 365 adult females to establish a rough estimate of sexual violence incidence, with adult respondents reporting only a handful of incidents of CSV (n = 5). The author suggested that interviewing adults may underestimate the prevalence of sexual violence against children where the perpetrator is a family member (Horn, 2011, unpublished report).…”