Getting Practical: Integrating Social Norms into Social and Behavior Change Programs

"Recognizing that we are all governed by an unwritten rule book can be helpful when things change, or we want them to change. Simply deciding to open up that rule book and examine what it contains gives us the option to change what is written there." - Lisa Cobb

When behaviour change is a programme goal, it is necessary to understand if, how, when, and under what conditions the behaviour is influenced by social norms - that is, what people in a group believe is typical and appropriate behaviour. This step-by-step guide is written for people in the field of social and behaviour change (SBC) who know how important social norms are but who may be unsure of how what they know about social norms should change their strategies, audiences, and messages. Specifically, it was designed to help country-level programme planners, designers, and monitoring/research staff to be aware of, fortify, or shift norms that influence their programme's behavioural objectives and to monitor the effects of those programmes on social norms. Getting Practical uses examples from family planning and reproductive health, but any SBC programme can use this tool.

The resource is the result of a participatory process of input and feedback organised by teams from Breakthrough ACTION and the Learning Collaborative to Advance Normative Change (or Learning Collaborative). It is based on work by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded Passages Project and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF)-funded Learning Collaborative, such as the resource linked under Related Summaries, below.

Getting Practical is designed to be used in a workshop setting with a small group of programme designers, researchers, and community members working together to benefit from diverse experiences and knowledge. The hands-on tool comprises four modules with worksheets and activities that should be completed in order, as a team:

1. Understanding the Norms: Organise the team's understanding of the normative influences on behaviours of interest, based on formative research findings.
2. Consult the Community: Engage purposefully with the community to share the norms assessment and seek guidance on whether and how norms should change; any shifting of norms should come out of the community's stated desire to do so, and a group of supportive community members should be the visible leads for the programme.
3. Design or Adapt Your Program: Identify how to integrate attention to social norms into existing/planned activities, and validate and/or strengthen the programme theory of change.
4. Monitoring Plan: Design/refine a plan that includes indicators, data sources, and frequency of data collection in order to assess programme quality, coverage or reach, and initial outcomes.

Examples of the activities are included in the modules, and blank templates are provided in the annexes.

In the hands of a fully prepared facilitator, programmes can plan to work through Getting Practical over the course of three days in a single workshop. Alternatively, programmes can break the work into multiple half-day meetings and consultations, an approach that might be useful for programmes that need to put extra effort into community consultation.

In an interview, one of the authors provides an example of when the use of Getting Practical might be indicated: "[I]magine a program designed to improve the sexual and reproductive health of adolescent girls. When you do community consultation and talk to girls, they may identify social norms about the need to control, restrict or shame girls' sexual activity as being barriers to their health, and those girls may want those norms to shift. But when you consult with the parents of those girls, they may believe that these same social norms are necessary to girls' wellbeing. People in the same community - in the same family! - may recognize the same social norms but feel differently about whether they should shift. A respectful approach to integrating social norms into social and behavior change programming will need to wrestle with that tension. The decision to actively shift social norms should come from within a community, never from outside it."

In addition to the guide, Getting Practical includes:

• A slide deck (linked below) for each of the four modules that facilitators can adapt and use to introduce, conduct, and wrap up each individual activity in the workshop.
• A video (see below) that explains the purpose of the tool and guides facilitators through how to use it.