Measurement of decision making power: Exploring intimate partner violence (IPV) in India

Background: There is no debate that decision making ability is critical to women's empowerment. Yet its measurement and definition presents great methodological challenges. Various decision making measures often produce differing, if not contradictory, analytical results. Purpose: To explore the variations in measurement, this study describes different ways the literature operationalizes women's decision making ability within the context of empowerment. Methods: Using data from the Indian National Family Health Survey (2005-06), five measures of decision making perceptions among married couples are considered: (1) a feminist approach examining individual gendered domains of decision making (i.e. financial, childcare, household purchases, etc.); (2) a couple's approach that describes women's participation in decision making (i.e. joint decision making); (3) a summative score which signifies women's level of participation in decision making (from low to high); (4) a measure examining decision making within the dyadic relationship to reflect decision making dominance (i.e. egalitarian, male-dominant, or female-dominant relationships); and (5) three separate indices that quantify the sole decisions made by each spouse and those made jointly; this method focuses on the spousal dynamics individually, as well as within the dyad. Binary logistic regressions are performed with each decision making measure predicting women's experience with IPV. Results: Regressions of the five decision making measures produced inconsistent findings in their relationships with IPV. Several similarities and differences were observed. Conclusions: Before selecting measures of decision making power for studies exploring women's empowerment, a thorough review of the methodological, theoretical and conceptual implications of the study must be considered.