Achieving social change on gender-based violence: A report on the impact evaluation of Soul City's fourth series
Section snippets
Background—domestic violence in South Africa
Domestic violence is described as endemic to South Africa. A 2003 antenatal survey in one city found 38% of women had experienced domestic violence at some point in their lives; 35% of women during their current pregnancy (Mbokota & Moodley, 2004). A prevalence study across three of nine provinces found that 9.5% of women had been physically abused in the previous year. In one province 28.4% of women reported ever being physically abused, and over 50% of women reported of emotional abuse in the
Introduction—the Soul City/NNVAW partnership for social change
The Soul City vehicle is developed by the Soul City Institute for Health and Development Communication (SC: IHDC)—a South African NGO utilising mass media for social change. The vehicle consists of prime time radio and television dramas and print material. It uses edutainment, where social issues are integrated into entertainment formats, which has been shown to be a powerful mechanism to achieve social change objectives. Through drama Soul City is able to reach prime time audiences, and
Demographic profile of the national survey samples
Table 2 shows that the sociodemographic characteristics of the samples were very similar for the baseline () and follow-up survey ().
About 48% of the respondents lived in rural areas, 52% resided in urban and metropolitan communities. 90% were African with the remainder of the sample “Coloured” (10%). There was a 2–1 ratio of women to men. 66% of respondents were between 16 and 35, while 34% were 35 and older. Over 50% had completed at least a secondary education. As a general rule,
Knowledge
There is an association between exposure to SC4 media and increased knowledge of where to find support. Eight months after it had been established, 41% of respondents nationally had heard of the Helpline. This is entirely attributed to the SC4/NNVAW intervention as the line was established specifically for this purpose. 16% of people with no exposure to SC4 compared to 61% of respondents with exposure to 3 SC4 media knew about the Helpline (). Men and women with high exposure to SC4 print
Attitude
Attitudinal change across a number of items is associated with exposure to SC4 media (see Table 5). Fifty-six percent of respondents pre-intervention disagreed that domestic violence is a private affair compared to 66% post-intervention. 60% of those exposed to three types of SC4 and 77% of those not exposed felt that domestic violence is a private affair ().
A positive attitudinal shift was found on the item “As head of the household, a man has the right to beat a woman” but it was not
Behaviours
In the post-intervention survey, 8% of respondents reported experience of domestic violence in response to the item “have you or anyone close to you been abused physically or emotionally by their husband or boyfriend”. SC4 exposure is associated with support-seeking behaviour around domestic violence—with regards to contacting a support organisation, and using the Helpline: none of the respondents with no exposure to SC4 contacted a support organisation, 5% of respondents with exposure to three
Discussion
In a thorough literature review, no available evaluations of local or international interventions of this magnitude were found to serve as a yardstick for assessing the comparative success of the SC4 intervention.
The study shows a consistent association between SC4 and positive change.
The use of cross-sectional surveys of different samples (i.e. the absence of longitudinal data on the same respondents) limits the ability to argue causality since other factors may account for changes observed
Conclusion
The SC4 evaluation pointed to the value of a partnership model combining the social mobilising capabilities of organisations on the ground with the clout of large scale mass media interventions. This, together with the success of the advocacy campaign resulted in the formalisation of partner social mobilisation and advocacy strategies into the organisation's work. The strategy of edutainment was also shown to be an important mechanism for social change.
Despite its limitations, the evaluation
Acknowledgements
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“An Evaluation of SC4” conducted by CASE: T. Samuels, J. Mollentz, R. Olusanya, M. Claassdens, S. Braehmenr and Z. Kimmie.
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“Impact Evaluation of SC4 in partnership with the NNVAW” conducted by Women's Health Project: N.J. Christofides.
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“SC4: Sentinel Site Study” conducted by Social Surveys: Katharine Hall and Karen Daniels.
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Media monitoring and analysis and interviews with journalists for the Partnership Evaluation Study, conducted by Khosi Xaba, Mweru Mwingi and Irene Muriuki.
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Dhaval Patel:
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