Community Norms - Youth

The Community Norms – Youth is a 4 item measure of domestic labor and household decision-making community norms among youth in Eswatini.

Short Measure

Scoring Procedures

Response options are merged to create a three-category variable: strongly agree/agree, neither agree/disagree, disagree/strongly disagree. Items were coded so that 1 = equal/positive responses, 2 = neutral responses, and 3 = not equal/harmful responses.

For example, “our culture makes it harder for girls to achieve their goals than boys”, those responding disagree or strongly disagree would be indicating the presence of more equal norms between boys and girls in their community, that is, they perceive that their culture does not make it harder for girls to achieve their goals relative to boys. For this item, the disagree/ strongly disagree response category was coded 1 to indicate equal/positive responses. Conversely, for the example item “women in my community work outside the home”, those endorsing the agree/strongly agree response options would be indicating the presence of a more equal community for women and men. For this item, agree/strongly agree was coded 1 to indicate equal/positive responses.

Original Citation

Miedema, S. S., Massetti, G. M., Annor, F. B., Chiang, L. F., Lundgren, R., & Raj, A. (2026). Psychometric validation of a novel community norms measure among youth, Eswatini Violence Against Children and Youth Survey, 2022. PLoS One, 21(5), e0345048. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0345048