Risk factors associated with experiences of violence and its consequences for women's health: a scoping review protocol.

INTRODUCTION

Violence against girls and women (VAWG) is a public health problem and a violation of human rights. The prevalence of different forms of VAWG indicates that this is a recurring global issue that provokes economic, social and health consequences. In this paper, we outline a scoping review protocol to characterise risk factors for VAWG from an intersectional and intergenerational perspective and discuss the consequences of such experiences for women's health.

METHODS AND ANALYSIS

The protocol will be conducted according to the Joanna Briggs Institute Methodology for Scoping Reviews and will involve six consecutive steps: (1) formulating the research question, (2) search strategy, (3) study selection, (4) eligibility criteria, (5) data extraction, (6) data analysis and presentation of results and (7) stakeholder consultation. The search strategy will include eight indexed databases (PubMed, BVS, Scopus, Web of Science, EMBASE, Cinahl, Cochrane Library and PsycInfo) and recommendations from professional organisations and international agencies. The search will be limited to publications in English, Spanish and Portuguese, according to the Health Sciences Descriptors/Medical Subject Headings and free terms. Two independent researchers will select articles based on the inclusion criteria, and a third author will be consulted to establish consensus. Data extraction will involve a form with information on study characteristics, methodological issues and main results from the sources of evidence. Extracted data will be analysed using descriptive and content analysis. The NVIVO 14 software will be used to organise and validate the data. The protocol was registered in the Open Science Framework (DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/P6H2S).

ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION

Ethical approval is not required as data from publicly available literature sources will be used. The results will be disseminated through publications in scientific journals and presentations of the evidence to stakeholders.