Understanding the roots: Local stakeholders’ insights on the causes and challenges in combating child marriage in mountainous Karnali, Nepal
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Child marriage remains a pressing issue in Nepal despite a decreasing trend in recent decades. The Nepal constitution prohibits child marriage, and the local governments have implemented various strategies to combat it. Nevertheless, child marriage practice continues, particularly in remote and mountainous regions, posing a challenge to the effectiveness and sustainability of interventions. This study aimed to gather insights from key community stakeholders on the consequences and perceived causes of child marriage, which can serve as a foundation for developing culturally appropriate interventions in Karnali province. Eleven Focus Group Discussions and 13 Key Informant Interviews were conducted with a total of 121 participants, with adult and adolescent participants' mean ages of 35.2 and 15.2 years, respectively. The participants were asked about the significance of child marriage in their community, its consequences, and perceived causes. Discussions were transcribed verbatim in Nepali, and a thematic approach was used for data analysis. There was agreement that child marriage has been declining in the community but continues to be a substantial public health issue. Clear comprehension of the consequences of child marriage, both immediate and long-term, was evident. Child marriage was identified to be influenced by a complex interplay of factors across individual, interpersonal, community, and policy levels. Cultural and gender norms and socioeconomic determinants emerged as interconnected and primary causes. An additional theme highlighted the inequity in accessing information and services, particularly for women and girls. The significance of recognizing the agency of individuals and community groups in their ability to change was also underscored. These findings suggest the stakeholders' awareness of child marriage in their community is significant. To develop and implement effective and sustainable interventions, it is crucial for diverse stakeholder groups to take ownership and actively participate in the planning and execution of interventions led by local government initiatives.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".