Working with New Public Datasets on Violence Against Children and Adolescents in International Settings

This workshop is designed to introduce new and established researchers to the availability of high quality data sets on violence against children and young adults in low- and middle-income countries. The Violence Against Children Surveys (VACS) public data sets have been prepared by the Division of Violence Prevention at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as part of the Together for Girls Partnership and in conjunction with participating national governments. The partnership aims to raise awareness, promote evidence-based solutions, and galvanize coordinated action to end violence against girls and boys, with a special focus on sexual violence against girls. VACS are nationally representative surveys of youth ages 13 to 24 that measure the burden and contexts of violence, associated risk and protective factors, and health consequences. Until recently, understanding of the nature and extent of violence against children and young adults in many lower- and middle-income settings has been hampered by the high costs of prospective international studies and the absence of high quality secondary data for analysis. This has slowed the pace of social work research in this area as well as the development of data-driven interventions that take into account the different societal contexts in which violence against children and young adults occurs. Social work graduate students, in particular, have been deterred from pursuing careers as international violence researchers due to these limitations. Data from VACS surveys currently available to researchers include Cambodia, eSwatini (formerly Swaziland; includes only data for girls), Haiti, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, and Tanzania. Workshop participants will receive information about the content and scope of the datasets and the procedures and criteria for requesting access. Workshop presenters will include a panel of three researchers at different stages of their careers who are currently working with these datasets to explore various dimensions of violence against children and young adults in different countries – a university faculty member serving on the board of Together for Girls, a post-doctoral fellow, and a social work doctoral student. A senior scientist from the CDC Division of Violence Prevention will be available at the workshop to answer questions relating to data collection methodology and the availability of technical support for future data users. During a ninety-minute session, the panel will present on the topics above and lead a discussion with workshop participants on the VACS surveys and how data are being used to develop context-relevant, data-driven interventions in partnership with national governments, local civil society organizations, and international partners. Participants will have the opportunity to learn more about the Together for Girls Partnership and to review sample VACS codebooks. It is anticipated that the workshop will encourage social work researchers to engage in more international research on violence against children and young adults and contribute to a growing community of scholars on this topic.