A course on how to use and analyse the Violence Against Children and Youth Surveys (VACS) data.

LearnVACS: course aims

The aim of this VACS course is to support researchers, practitioners, advocates and policymakers to contextualise, analyse, interpret and use the Violence Against Children and Youth Surveys (VACS).

We want to create a community of practice to support analyses of data on violence against children to inform programming and policy and create a free and accessible resource on how to analyse data on violence against children.

This course is for you if you:

Are interested in understanding how VACS data were collected
Want to learn approaches to analysing data on violence
Are planning or conducting analyses of VACS data

Overview of the course

Section 1: In section 1 we will introduce the Violence against Children and Youth Surveys (VACS), describe how the Uganda VACS was designed and conducted, offer examples of interviewing young people about violence, and describe principles and approaches to ensuring ethical data collection.
Section 2: In section 2 we will introduce the global epidemiology of violence against children and key principles and approaches to analysing quantitative data on violence against children.
Section 3: In section 3 we will describe the sampling approach of the VACS, describe the constructs in the VACS, and demonstrate how to construct and code violence variables, including physical, sexual, emotional and school-related gender-based violence.
Section 4: In section 4 we will introduce key principles of reporting and communicating data on violence and explore examples of how VACS data are used in programming, policies and research.

How to take the course:

Watch all the sections or select the ones more relevant to you
It may be helpful to have a provisional research question related to the VACS
Download VACS data and documentation from the Together for Girls website
Give us your feedback! Link to feedback form here

Subscribe and stay involved!

Join a growing, global community dedicated to ending violence against children and adolescents.

Also sign up to Net-VAC: a network of early career violence researchers who are interested in exploring how school, household, neighbourhood and community contexts shape experiences of and use of violence as children grow up. The network will meet several times in 2024 and 2025.

Thank you to the SDG Impact grant at the University of Oxford for supporting this course.