AyudaMujer: A Mobile Application for the Treatment of Violence Against Women in Peru

Figures & data

Table 1. Chatbots related to violence against women.

Features	SuperWoman (Monalisa et al., 2021)	NamuBot (Park & Lee., 2021)	Conversational Interactive Response (Hossain et al., 2020)
Informative	Provides information about laws on violence against women.	No	Provides information about laws on violence against women.
Psychological treatment	No	Yes	No
Help in decision making	The chatbot suggests how to act based on laws and what happened.	The chatbot lightens the negative burden of the victim through an anonymous conversation.	The chatbot answers basic questions, and if it identifies an aggression attempt, it sends an alert.
It covers physical, psychological, and sexual violence.	Physical, psychological, and sexual violence.	Sexual violence	Physical violence
Language	English and Bengali	English	English

Figure 1. AyudaMujer mobile application model.

Table 2. Modules of the AyudaMujer model.

Module	Description
Chatbot	This module identifies, through dialogue, the type of violence (physical, psychological, and sexual) and the level of risk of the victim (mild, moderate, severe, or very severe). The levels of risk considered are those used by the WEC, and the dialogue to identify it in a victim is given in annex A of law 30364 “Guide to Comprehensive Care of Women’s Emergency Centers” (El Peruano, 2015). This way, the necessary parameters are obtained to provide professional and personalized treatment without needing more personnel.
Specialist Assignment	This module is responsible for assigning a specialist to the victim according to the type of violence suffered. Attention to victims is done by prioritizing the victim’s risk level and the availability of specialists.
Chat	This module consists of a conversation space where the victim can communicate with her assigned specialist. If the victim needs to talk to someone urgently and her assigned specialist is offline, she can talk to another specialist online. Additionally, the chat allows you to make video calls, attach photos or files, and send text or voice messages.
News	This module contains relevant news related to violence against women. The news module will be useful and informative for the application users. When some news is selected, it is redirected to the page where it belongs. This section will reduce the lack of information regarding violence against women.
WEC Map	This module provides an interactive map that shows the closest Women’s Emergency Centers to the victim’s location, according to the application’s GPS. This is beneficial since many women victims of violence do not know where to go or if there is a WEC close to their home or location.
Feedback	This module allows the specialist to register functionality feedback or news synthesis and suggest changes to improve the application.

Table 3. Scores by risk level.

Level of risk	Score
Mild	0–7
Moderate	8–13
Severe	14–37

Table 4. Types of violence and keywords.

Types of violence	Keywords
Physical	weapons, injuries, blows, shoves, kicks, slaps, non-accidental damage, pulling, object, punching
Sexual	vaginal, anal, oral, rape, sexual
Psychological	slander, screams, insults, disdain, mockery, irony, control situations, humiliations, threats, self-esteem

Figure 2. Architecture of the AyudaMujer mobile application.

Figure 3. Identification: (A) type of violence; (B) level of risk.

Figure 4. Chat module: (A) victim-specialist dialogue; (B) list of available specialists.

Figure 5. Interfaces: (A) WEC map; (B) news; (C) feedback.

Table 5. Sample of victims.

Id	Age	Occupation	Education level	Id	Age	Occupation	Education level
M01	20	Student	University	M11	52	Merchant	CHS
M02	21	Student	University	M12	29	Merchant	CHS
M03	22	Student	University	M13	38	Merchant	CHS
M04	21	Student	University	M14	45	Merchant	UCH
M05	21	Student	University	M15	48	Merchant	UCH
M06	32	Merchant	CHS	M16	53	Merchant	UCH
M07	41	Housekeeper	CHS	M17	39	Housekeeper	UCH
M08	30	Housekeeper	CHS	M18	32	Merchant	UCH
M09	45	Merchant	CHS	M19	51	Merchant	UCH
M10	51	Merchant	CHS	M20	42	Housekeeper	UCH

CHS: Completed high school; UHS: Uncompleted high school.

Figure 6. Risk level before and after using AyudaMujer for 3 wk.

Figure 7. Number of victims by level of risk.

Table 6. Results of the efficacy evaluation.

Id	Initial score	Final score	Variation (%)	Id	Initial score	Final score	Variation (%)
M01	05	05	0.00	M11	10	08	20.20
M02	17	15	11.76	M12	11	08	27.27
M03	12	10	16.67	M13	11	06	45.45
M04	18	21	−16.67	M14	15	11	26.67
M05	10	07	30.00	M15	24	20	16.67
M06	10	06	40.00	M16	21	16	23.81
M07	22	20	9.09	M17	24	22	8.33
M08	27	21	22.22	M18	15	13	13.33
M09	25	22	12.00	M19	13	08	38.46
M10	14	10	28.57	M20	20	17	15.00

Monalisa, N., Himi, S., Ferdous, N., Islam, E., & Majumder, A. (2021). “SuperWomen”: A smart mobile application for social security focusing threats and supports for ­women. International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies (iJIM), 15(03), pp. 97–112. doi:10.3991/ijim.v15i03.17555

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