Glossary: Reducing and preventing violence against women

The development of a place-based ‘saturation’ model is intended to inform investment and effort in primary prevention work to shift the drivers of violence against women, employing the mutually-reinforcing effect to maximise impact. This section proposes definitions for key terms to ensure we are using them in a consistent way, aligned with practice in Victoria and the broader literature, Note, some are formalised in prevention literature, and cited accordingly. Where no citations are provided, the definition is a working one for this project, agreed among key stakeholders.

For a fuller range of terms related to the prevention of violence against women see the glossaries in Change the Story (reference 4) and Respect Victoria’s Strategic Plan 2023-2028.

Terms related to prevention

Primary prevention

Refers to ‘whole-of-population initiatives that address the primary (’first’ or underlying) drivers of violence against women (reference 4).’ This requires ‘changing the social conditions that give rise to this violence; reforming the institutions and systems that excuse, justify or promote such violence; and shifting the power imbalances and social norms, structures and practices that drive and normalise it (reference 28).’ 

Primary prevention doesn’t simply focus on individuals, but takes a whole-of-population approach, aiming to change the environments within which people understand their roles and relationships, form their beliefs and make their decisions. It does this by using policy, legislative and regulatory levers; influencing institutional, systemic, social, cultural and organisational change; and implementing programs and initiatives across all the different places people live, learn, work, socialise and play. These strategies address the social norms, practices and systems known to support and drive violence – across institutions, organisations and communities, within relationships and families, and among individuals.

Early intervention (sometimes referred to as secondary prevention)

Aims to ‘change the trajectory for individuals at higher-than-average risk of perpetrating or experiencing violence (reference 4).’ 

Response (sometimes referred to as tertiary prevention)

Supports victim–survivors and holds perpetrators to account, aiming to prevent the recurrence of violence (reference 4). 

Recovery

An ‘ongoing process that enables victim-survivors to find safety, health, wellbeing, resilience and to thrive in all areas of their life (reference 4).’

A prevention technique

Our Watch defines a technique as ‘the method for the delivery of prevention (reference 4)’ and outlines a number that have demonstrated effectiveness, including:

• Direct participation programs
• Organisational development
• Community mobilisation and strengthening
• Communications and social marketing campaigns
• Civil society advocacy and social movement activism.

While these techniques are not confined to use in specific settings or at specific levels of the social ecology, some lend themselves better to particular settings/levels. Organisational development, for instance, obviously targets the organisational level of the social ecology and works best in settings with formal organisational structures. The way in which different prevention techniques (alone or in concert) can be creatively deployed across multiple settings and levels to maximise impact is one of the key questions of this study.

NB – Some studies in the prevention literature use the term ‘strategy’ to refer to the types of techniques outlined above.

A prevention intervention

Because this project is concerned with the mutually-reinforcing effect of multiple primary prevention interventions, it is useful to be clear about what we mean by a ‘prevention intervention’ in the field of violence against women. Our working definition of a prevention intervention, in its simplest form, is an activity that:

• Employs a prevention technique,  
• In a setting or site (see definitions below),
• With a certain population/audience.

While most prevention interventions are a more complex than this (e.g. they employ more than one strategy/technique), a ‘simple’ prevention intervention is useful to define this way as it can be considered the most basic unit of the model we are seeking to create.

A multi-component prevention intervention

A multi-component intervention is, for the purposes of this paper, an intervention (defined above) that employs two or more strategies/techniques, and/or works across two or more settings, and/or targets two or more different populations and/or levels of the social ecology. Much of the literature refers to ‘multi-component interventions’ as having greater impact than ‘single component’ ones, but the term ‘component’ means different things in different studies (e.g. sometimes ‘strategies’, sometimes ‘settings (reference 25)’, and sometimes left undefined). Here we will understand it as a general term than can encompass any of the above – and this refers to any intervention beyond the simplest type described in the previous definition.

A prevention program

Speaking of a ‘program’ implies something bigger than a single intervention. A program is defined here as ‘any set of related activities undertaken to achieve an intended outcome. It can include policies; interventions; environmental, systems, and media initiatives; and other efforts. It also encompasses preparedness efforts as well as research, capacity, and infrastructure efforts (footnote 1).’ Our ‘saturation model’ will, aim to provide overarching guidance for the development of prevention programs at the place-based level.

Scale-up or ‘scaling’

Scaling(-up) is a process that ‘involves expanding effective small-scale interventions, programs or initiatives to a larger or whole community, setting or whole population level. Scale(-up) requires thorough pilot testing, tailoring to local contexts, building system infrastructure to support large-scale implementation, and adequate funding (reference 28).’ Sustainable scale(-up) will also require ‘systematisation’ (see below). 

Systematisation

Systematisation is ‘embedding prevention initiatives into policy, regulation, legislation and across organisations and institutions at state-wide, regional and setting levels (reference 28).’

Prevention system infrastructure

Prevention infrastructure (sometimes called prevention architecture) refers to ‘the core components, facilities, services and mechanisms considered essential for enabling and sustaining effective primary prevention of violence against women and increasing uptake of quality primary prevention across setting/sectors (reference 28).’ 

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Terms related to impact

Impact

‘Impact,’ in the social sciences, refers to the long-term effects produced (directly or indirectly) by an intervention (reference 69). However the initial discussion and literature mapping phase for this project led us to reserve the term ‘impact’ in this study solely to refer to the ultimate goal of prevention of violence against women activity, which is a reduction in the number of new incidences of perpetration and/or victimisation (whether at the population level, or confined to program/intervention participants). For clarity’s sake, we refer to this as ‘violence against women impact.’

This decision was based on the fact that much of the source literature on the effectiveness of prevention interventions or programs used a similar definition, and we wanted to maintain consistency with those studies in our discussion of their findings and our subsequent conclusions. We also wanted a terminology that provided a clear distinction between reductions in incidents of violence itself from other (albeit critical) outcomes of prevention interventions, most importantly, significant and positive shifts among the drivers and reinforcing factors of violence. 

Limiting our definition of impact in this way by no means implies that the only result we are seeking from prevention activities is reduction in violence against women perpetration/victimisation. Our theories of change tells us that arriving at such impact requires several other factors to change first (notably among the recognised drivers of violence, as mentioned above). Further, prevention interventions need to pass through several stages of development and refinement before we would expect them to show such results. The evaluation framework for our eventual model will need to account for this complexity and we may decide to use the terminology of impact and other evaluative terms differently from this study, and in a way responsive to the different interventions and their varying objectives and stages of development.

‘Participant or intervention-level impact’

Refers to the impact (as defined above) on those individuals directly engaged or targeted by an intervention. Such impact is usually demonstrated by interventions seeking to directly shift individual attitudes, beliefs and behaviours related to the gendered drivers or reinforcing factors of violence against women and so ultimately prevent or reduce future experiences of violence perpetration or victimisation, by these participants (e.g. using skills-building workshops, social marketing or other strategies). It should be noted that not all prevention interventions seek to engage individuals this way: some, for example, build processes and capacity that enable direct engagement work, such as curriculum development or teacher training, others might seek to create an environment that enables gender equality and addresses the gendered drivers of violence, such as by promoting organisational policy or system changes (sometimes called ‘environmental interventions’). These too are an essential part of prevention activity, but it would not make sense to evaluate such interventions for direct impact on rates of violence against women victimisation/perpetration.

‘Population-level impact’

Refers to impact (as defined above) that can confidently be attributed to the influence of a prevention intervention and is demonstrated across an entire geographic or demographic population (however small or large) – including people who have not been directly engaged by the intervention and may not even be aware of it. In public health terms, these are people who benefit from an intervention, not because they have been ‘treated’ as individuals, but because risk factors have been lowered in their broader environment (reference 26) (e.g. social norms supportive of violence against women have started to shift).

Outcomes

‘Outcomes’ are the likely or achieved short-term and medium-term effects of the things the intervention does (activities and outputs) (reference 69). For example, from an activity, held in an organisational context, to ‘run a workshop on recognising gender stereotypes,’ a desired short-term outcome would be improved knowledge or skills of workshop participants, and a desired medium-term outcome (if the activity were part of a broader program of work) might be positive shifts in organisational gender norms.  

In this study, we use the terminology of ‘outcomes’ to refer to both short and medium-term outcomes of the nature described above (NB our understanding of the process of change is described in Section: Factors that make a difference to scale and sustainability of violence against women impact). The term ‘driver/reinforcing factor outcomes’ refers to significant changes in the structures, norms and practices related to those factors recognised as driving and reinforcing violence.

Prevalence

Prevalence, in this study, aligns with the Personal Safety Survey definition and refers to the number and proportion of people in a given population that have experienced violence within a specified timeframe, for example in the last 12 months (past 12-month prevalence), or over a person’s lifetime (lifetime prevalence) (reference 62). Prevalence is a 'point in time' measure providing indication of the extent of a problem.

Rate/incidence rate

While ‘rate’ as an informal term is sometimes used interchangeably with ‘prevalence’, the specific term ‘incidence rate’ refers to the frequency of occurrences of violence, in a particular population over a given timeframe.

Saturation

The term ‘saturation’ is used to describe different phenomena across the social sciences, but it consistently denotes the idea of ‘doing so much that there’s no added value to doing any more.’ For the purposes of this project, the term ‘saturation’ describes the ultimate goal of our model – that is, to achieve the maximum impact we could expect to achieve in our efforts to prevent violence against women at the place-based level.

(Mutual)-reinforcement

The dictionary definition of ‘reinforcement’ is ‘the action of strengthening or encouraging something’ (footnote 2) and ‘mutual’ means simply ‘joint’ or ‘shared in common (footnote 3)’. So when we say ‘mutually-reinforcing’ we are implying that the things we are talking about are each being made stronger. In prevention work, then, the implication is that the coordinated implementation of two or more interventions makes each of them stronger.

In health promotion, implementing mutually-reinforcing interventions has been shown to have a magnification effect on impact. That is, when multiple prevention interventions are implemented in a coordinated way to contribute to a shared prevention goal, they have greater impact than single-component interventions happening in isolation. 

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Terms related to places where prevention work happens

For the purposes of clarity in this project, we use several terms related to place in specific ways. 

Setting

‘Settings refer to the environments in which people live, work, learn, socialise and play, such as workplaces, schools, universities, community organisations, sports clubs, the media and popular culture (reference 28).’ ‘Settings’ can exist at multiple levels of the social ecology, and refer to collections or locations of activity with common purpose, recognisable to those within them and the public more generally. They are ‘contexts in which environmental, organisational and personal factors interact, […] where policy frameworks […] come to life, and where social and cultural values are produced and reinforced (reference 4),’ often influenced by a particular sector (see below) (footnote 4).

Sector

‘Sectors’ refers to the formal entities (systems, organisations, businesses and industries) that provide the structure, policies and norms for those employed by them. They have a direct impact on those who work in them and an influence on those who interact with their products and services.

Site

Though the terms ‘site’ and ‘place’ are often used interchangeably, we suggest, for the purposes of this project, that we make a distinction between them, and define ‘site’ as a specific physical location that is part of a setting, with specific people in it (e.g. a classroom, council office, football club, etc).

Place

For the purposes of this project, we use the term ‘place’ to speak of a geographically bound area (e.g. a region, LGA or ward). Any one place could include multiple sites and may include several communities (see below). 

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Terms related to the people prevention work seeks to engage

Community

A community is not about place per se, but rather refers to any group of people who share certain characteristics or connections. These can be shared experience, identity, interests, goals, or history. It can be that a community shares geographic space, but in most such cases communities would not define themselves by official boundaries alone.  

No individual is part of a single community only, but rather a constellation of communities defined by multiple and intersecting characteristics and connections (whether geographic, professional, faith-based, etc). Depending on how narrowly or broadly a community is defined, it can be useful in prevention terms to think of ‘cohorts’ within the community.

Cohort

A cohort is a sub-section of a community, more narrowly defined than the broader community. For example, if a community is defined as ‘newly arrived refugees’ then a cohort could be those from particular countries or faith groups, or those who have settled in regional areas. Alternatively, if the community is defined as ‘residents of the X neighbourhood of Maribyrnong’, then a cohort could be those who are newly arrived refugees. 

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Terms related to the prevention approaches discussed in this paper

Community-level prevention

The ‘community level’ in prevention terms is the part of the social ecology that ‘includes the built environment, social networks, and the organisations and institutions that sustain the individual and collective life of [a] community (reference 70).’ Community-level prevention is more complex than ‘an intervention in a community setting’ alone. Rather, it likely includes a range of approaches seeking to address determinants and reinforcing factors of violence for a particular community, working through the sites and places the community accesses. 

Community mobilisation

Community mobilisation is one of six prevention techniques mentioned in Change the Story and one well-suited to work at the community or place-based level of the social ecology. However, it is not so much a single technique, but ‘a set of interventions in which multiple components are deployed (reference 1).’ Community mobilisation works to ‘strengthen and support communities to address violence against women and to shift the social norms that make it acceptable; increase community access to the resources required for action, [and]; address broader community-level factors that may be contributing to violence against women (reference 4).’

Place-based approach

Place-based approaches involve an intervention or range of interventions that ‘target the specific circumstances of a place and engage local people as active participants in development and implementation, requiring government to share decision-making (reference 71).’ Place-based approaches tend to emphasise collaboration with local people, and are ‘ideally characterised by partnering and shared design, shared stewardship, and shared accountability for outcomes and impacts (reference 72).’

Community-based / community-led / community-driven approach

Similar to place-based approaches, community-based (or ‘-led’ or ‘-driven’) approaches are framed around the needs and circumstances of particular groups of people and involve ‘members of the affected community in the planning, development, implementation, and evaluation of programs and strategies’ (reference 70). While the terms ‘community-led’ and ‘community-driven’ imply a level of ownership and decision-making sitting with the community in question, the term ‘community-based’ is sometimes, but not always, used for less participatory, externally-led, project-based activity implemented in community settings. 

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Footnotes