The Influence of Organised Diffusion on Social Norms Change: Addressing Intimate Partner Violence in Nepal

ABSTRACT

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a significant global health issue. Organised diffusion has potential to influence changes in norms that perpetuate harmful practices by spreading anti-IPV messaging throughout social networks. The Change Starts at Home intervention in Nepal leverages radio programming and community mobilisation to address the perpetration of IPV. This qualitative analysis of couple interviews at the 18-month follow-up (N = 35 individuals) seeks to evaluate how the intervention messaging diffused into the community using organised diffusion as a framework, and how this influenced any changes in norms related to the perpetration of IPV. Overall, this study provides evidence that the Change at Home Intervention effectively diffused into the community and began to promote changes around IPV norms, especially among relationships that were socially and geospatially close. This analysis demonstrates the potential for organised diffusion to facilitate social norms change around IPV.

KEYWORDS:

• Organized diffusion
• social and behaviour change communication
• community mobilization
• norms

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study is supported by the Sexual Violence Research Initiative through the SVRI World Bank Group Development Marketplace for Innovation on Gender-Based Violence Prevention and Response using data originally collected by a grant [grant number #P06254] from UK aid from the UK government, via the What Works to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls? Global Programme.