Measuring attitudes on gender equality and domestic violence in the Arab context - The role of framing, priming and interviewer effects
Ann-Kristin Reitmann, Micheline Goedhuys, Michael Grimm & Eleonora Nillesen
#2019-027
Eliciting attitudes on sensitive topics such as women empowerment is
subject to a wide range of measurement challenges such as social
desirability bias and refusals. Even subtle changes in wording or
context can profoundly affect how respondents answer to a question.
Using data from two randomised experiments built into a nationwide
representative household survey in Tunisia, we analyse the effects of
(i) framing and (ii) priming on attitudes towards gender equality and
domestic violence in the Arab context. Moreover, we look at impact
heterogeneity with respect to the interviewers' gender and perceived
religiosity. Our first experiment shows that questions on attitudes
towards decision-making power invite stronger responses towards gender
inequality when framed in an inequality frame. In our second experiment
we find that attitudes towards domestic violence are susceptible to an
audio primer. Oral statistical information about the incidence of
domestic violence in Tunisia leads to lower support for domestic
violence among the male subsample but has no effect on women. Lastly,
impacts co-vary with interviewer characteristics. While female
interviewers seem to trigger less justification for domestic violence on
average, we find the opposite effect for female interviewers wearing a
hijab, arguably signalling stronger perceived religiosity and social
norms aligned with (more) tolerance of domestic violence. We discuss the
implications of our findings for development research on gender
attitudes and behaviour in gender-sensitive contexts.
Keywords: gender equality, domestic violence, framing, priming,
interviewer effects, survey experiment, MENA region
JEL Classification: C83, C99, D91, O12