Evaluating behavioural change in a fluid and volatile

Evaluating behavioural change in a fluid and volatile environment Dr Gwendolyn Wellmann SAMEA 2019

Behavioural change interventions More and more required in projects related to: - Health care Human rights Nature conservation Environmental protection Climate change adaptability

Behavioural change interventions – how to evaluate? • Evaluating these types of projects are of critical importance • Presents unique challenges • Generally these projects are complex with a layered context, sometimes fluid and more often the context rapidly changing • Actual sustained behavioural change = very different from awareness raising • Traditional evaluation purposes (design, implementation, results obtained) = not sufficient

Zambian GBV Project • “Empowering young female slum dwellers to tackle gender-based violence in Lusaka” • Tackled gender-based violence on three levels: individual, community, society. • Overall objective was to enable young women in the George and Linda settlements to have safe, happy and healthy lives free from violence • Activities: • improve young women’s self-esteem and self-efficacy, • change young men’s views of women and GBV, • provide young women commercial opportunities to become more financially secure • build capacity to deal with GBV in institutions working within the two settlements.

So what could go wrong? • Development agencies, NGOs/NPOs, charities tend to continue to focus on behavioural change as a cause and effect event • Belief that a single activity (or even a series of activities) can lead to the desired outcome within a short period of time (generally over a period of just four to five years) • Often totally ignores the multiple external factors that would also be in operation at any given time within the context • Stranglehold of culture, religion & their promotion of insidious violence

Evaluating behaviour change • Behavioural change: need a participatory learning approach • Most importantly it is a non-linear process • Thus evaluation needs to go beyond just measuring reach of project • Evaluation should capture the sustained outcomes in terms of beneficiaries’ motivation, ability to think critically & ability to take responsibility for own behavioural change

Conundrums • Absence of realistic time frame • Change in behaviour = change of mind-set, thinking patterns and values • Change in behaviour = not always observable • Self-reporting flawed. Social-desirability bias trips us up • Often any change in data attributed to “behavioural change” & linked to project/activity

So what are the solutions? First we have to ask: • What makes a project successful? Its impact? Or the completion of its activities? • And what about unexpected (harmful) outcomes?

Possible solutions • Should we completely decouple evaluation from monitoring for these projects? (as per Crawford & Bryce, 2003) • Should it be a goal-free evaluation (i. e. outcome harvesting, most significant change, etc. )? • Should a repeat evaluation be conducted after a longer period post-project in order to assess the real sustainability of the behaviour change (however limited) achieved by the project? • Should we demand that project design and M&E be changed/adapted?

Thank you for your time. ______________