CANVAS (Children, attitudes, norms, violence, and society): do social meanings of violence affect development of adverse outcomes?

Are violent acts harmful when they are not perceived as 'violence'? Violence in childhood is a pervasive human rights, health and development challenge. But there is a large international variation in what behavioural acts of violence are considered normal, acceptable and common. There is a large body of evidence showing long-term adverse health, education and other consequences of exposure to childhood violence, but this evidence is overwhelmingly drawn from high-income, lower prevalence settings where acts of violence may be considered less acceptable. There is some cross-cultural evidence that acts of violence may produce fewer adverse behavioural outcomes for children when those acts are perceived to be normative, but existing studies have been hampered by small sample sizes, and critically, have not considered the role of biological embedding of exposure to trauma.

Our interdisciplinary team will take advantage of existing data from three ongoing cohort studies in ten countries, and cross-sectional data from 96 countries, to explore how social norms and attitudes towards violent experiences affect the relationships between violence and various health, education, labour and biomarker outcomes. We will 1) conceptualise and explore qualitatively and quantitatively how children define normal, acceptable and common acts of violence in a range of contexts; 2) measure the biological embedding of exposure to 'normative' physical, sexual and emotional violence in childhood; 3) explore individual cognitive appraisals and emotional reactions to experience of 'normative' violence, and whether biological embedding varies according to these; 4) explore how social norms about violence within families and schools affect individual attitudes and violence-outcome relationships, and 5) explore how of social norms in communities, regions and across countries about violence shape family and school norms, individual attitudes and violence-outcome relationships. All of these aims will be underpinned and refined by 6) collaboration with advisory groups of children, adolescents, and global leaders working in the field of violence prevention. These groups will advise on research design, framing, and interpretation of results, and will help us think critically about how to frame our findings so that they impact and influence policy.

Our hypothesis is that 'normative' violence does in fact cause harm, even for children who live in contexts where that violence is common and accepted. If we are correct, our findings will underscore the importance of focusing on acts of violence that are routine and commonplace, and can inform the development of prevention interventions and guide investment priorities for policy makers and donors.