96 - Telling the Story of Changing Social Norms – Successes, Challenges and Lessons in Evaluating Edutainment Campaigns

Abstract Information: The World Bank defines edutainment, which is short for “entertainment-education”, as “the use of entertainment media with educational and development objectives”. Although the World Bank has previously recognized the potential effectiveness of edutainment campaigns, it has also acknowledged the relative lack of data on its efficacy. This session will explore how a primarily quantitative approach was used to measuring changes in social norms and related practices via an evaluation consisting of three observations (baseline, midline and endline) of youth and female respondents in the Republic of Tajikistan and the Kyrgyz Republic. It will share how these methods were used to “tell the story” of the evolution in social norms – a subject that has traditionally been measured primarily using qualitative approaches.

Relevance Statement: Social norms often have a powerful influence on people’s financial behavior. In the Republic of Tajikistan and the Kyrgyz Republic, research commissioned by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and conducted by MarketShare Associates (MSA) found that social norms were causing certain groups to be less likely to open a bank account and more likely to spend beyond their means on social events.
To address this, the IFC’s Central Asia Financial Inclusion project invested in a series of edutainment (which is short for “entertainment-education”) campaigns including a TV series, social media outreach, and a TEDx-style series of in-person events. The edutainment campaign aimed to reach at least 2 million listeners or viewers from among the target audience of rural women and urban and rural youth. The overall goal of the edutainment campaigns was to influence financial behaviors, social norms, beliefs and practices hindering consumers from the target group from taking part in the formal financial sector and affecting their ability to manage their finances appropriately.

Edutainment is understood to be a powerful strategy to promote positive behavior change, and yet the World Bank notes that “important gaps remain on how to best design, adapt, and distribute entertainment media to maximize its impacts on audiences and their communities”. There is also a relative lack of available data on its overall efficacy in achieving desired behavior changes.

This presentation will share findings and lessons gathered from an evaluation commissioned by the IFC and led by MSA on these edutainment campaigns. The evaluation ran alongside the campaigns and sought to understand both the reach and impact that the campaigns had. We will share details about the alternate evaluation designs that we considered, which one we chose and why, and what we learned about the method we employed. In particular, we will delve into the use of an encouragement design in which we provided messages to two thirds of the sample that encouraged them to consume the treatment content.

Attendees of this session will walk away with a thorough understanding of the options that exist in designing edutainment evaluations, the pros and cons of each, and lessons harvested from this specific evaluation experience in central Asia that can inform future evaluations.