The Drum Beat 836: Same or Different? Social Change and Behaviour Change

• a. Social change: People gathering and working together to change the parts of the world around them that have a detrimental effect on all their lives
• The primary focus is on the overall ways in which societies, cultures, communities, and countries can change to improve the collective rights and situations of people - bettering society by improving human and social conditions. This approach involves action focused on, for example: strengthening people's rights; achieving increased economic, social, and gender equity; reducing levels of discrimination; enhancing the accountability of governing and policymaking institutions; and opening up private and public spaces for dialogue, debate, and organisation to place often-sensitive issues and questions in the public domain. In the social change approach, people are collective actors for the social change they identify, agree on, and want; the focus is not on the individual changes identified as being in their personal interests.
   
• b. Behaviour change: Individual people changing how they personally behave
• The primary focus is on the individual actions people can take related to their own, their child(ren)'s, their friends', and their family's health, education, employment, safety, security, and other aspects of their personal well-being: Get vaccinated, use a condom, have a birth attendant present, stop misusing alcohol, use a bed net, wear a seatbelt, take oral rehydration salts when needed, take a vitamin A supplement, attend school, use a latrine, wash hands, refrain from intimate partner violence, and conduct an infinite number of other possible personal actions that can enhance the quality of - and even save - one or more lives.
   
• Questions: Do you agree? Are the core principles that drive social change and behaviour change different? If yes, are these substantive differences?

• a. SOCIAL CHANGE
• Planning models include:
   
• Social Movements
  
  • * Emerge and grow organically from people - their experiences and principles.
  • * Focus on challenging and changing existing norms, beliefs, institutions, or systems that people analyse as working against their collective interests.
  • * Nurture, coalesce, and grow a diverse set of voices and experiences through dialogue.
  • * Nurture, coalesce, and grow a diverse set of linked collective actions.
  • * Seek to create and expand a set of collective actions focused on the social and policy changes the people engaged in the movement regard as a priority.
• For a quotation encapsulating the social movements model, please see page 7 of the full report summarised here.
   
• Empowerment
  
  • * Support individuals who are disenfranchised to take charge of their own learning and to develop a deeper understanding of their own position within a community through active participation and engagement.
  • * Build both individual and group capacity to differentiate and integrate their experiences of the world and, in so doing, to act, confront, and overcome their social conditions.
  • * Enable a process that targets self-determination, self-efficacy, intrinsic motivation, and engagement to help individuals and groups gain power, access to resources, and control over their own lives.
  • * Construct knowledge through "conscientization": a process that includes simultaneously biological, behavioural, and social transformations, especially those that have been collectively created.
• For a diagrammatic representation of the empowerment model, please see this link.
   
• 8 Core Social Change Programming Elements:
  1. Facilitate a process of engagement.
  2. Seek to resonate with local, national, social, and cultural contexts.
  3. Amplify the voices, analysis, and ideas of those most affected by the development issues in question.
  4. Play a support and enhancement role for "natural" social movements that emerge (even in very nascent forms) around priority issues.
  5. Help to build networks of people with shared concern about issues, including by connecting self-starting networks to make a larger mass.
  6. Facilitate conversation, dialogue, and debate on the key development issues in local, district, national, and regional contexts.
  7. Into this overall process of engagement, resonance, voice, social movements, networks, conversation, dialogue, and debate, introduce accurate knowledge (as knowledge not messages) on the development issues in question.
  8. Overall, create the space - physical, social, cultural, political, and family space - for effective action.
• For a diagrammatic representation of the social change model, please see this link.
   
• Participatory Communication
  
  • * Centre people as dynamic actors who actively take part in the process of social change and who are in control of the tools and contents, rather than as passive recipients of information and behavioural instructions.
  • * Enable people to take ownership of their own future through a process of dialogue and democratic participation in planning strategy and activities - building capacity to respond from the community level to the needs of change.
  • * Conceive social change and development as a long-term process that needs time to be appropriated by the people, rather than as a short-term campaign that is seldom sensitive to the cultural environment and mostly concerned with showing results for evaluations external to the community.
  • * Research, design, and disseminate accurate information with participation, rather than designing, pre-testing, launching, and evaluating messages that were conceived for the community and remain external to it.
  • * Adapt the process to each community or social group in terms of content, language, culture, and media, rather than using the same techniques, media, and messages in diverse cultural settings and for different social sectors of society.
• For a diagrammatic representation of the participatory communication model, please see page 23 of the full resource summarised here.
   
• b. BEHAVIOUR CHANGE
• Planning models include:
   
• The Socio-Ecological Model
  
  • * Put the individual at the centre. All dynamics flow to and focus on individual impact.
  • * Inform, guide, influence, and support the individual's future actions, with the interpersonal, institutional, community, and policy domains supporting and guiding individual people to take actions that are considered important for their well-being. (This system is sometimes called the supportive or enabling environment.)
  • * Focus on the individual taking the required actions for a better life - or a continuing life.
• For a diagrammatic representation of the socio-ecological model, please see this link.
   
• Behavioural Drivers
  
  • * Highlight BEHAVIOUR most strongly.
  • * Start from an in-depth understanding of the elements that influence a person's decisions and actions (e.g., those that carry health risks).
  • * Are grounded in change theory - e.g., Diffusion of Innovation, Extended Parallel Processing Model, Health Belief Model, Planned Behaviour/Theory of Reasoned Action, Social Learning/Cognitive Theory, Trans-theoretical Model.
  • * Look to the following for guidance and direction: psychology - e.g., for cognitive biases, interest, attitude, self-efficacy, intent, limited rationality, personal characteristics; sociology - e.g., for social influence, community dynamics, meta-norms, context; and environment - e.g., for communication environment, emerging alternatives, governing entities, structural barriers.
• For a diagrammatic representation of the behavioural drivers model, please see this link.
   
• Behavioural Insights
  
  • * Use experiment and observation to identify patterns of behaviour and to challenge established assumptions about what is thought to be the rational behaviour of citizens and businesses.
  • * Diagnose each stage of the decision-making process to identify barriers to optimal decision making and follow-through.
  • * Design interventions that break down barriers and then test efficacy using rigorous evaluation.
  • * Use "nudges" - e.g., social influence, implementation prompts, mandated deadlines, personalisation, loss aversion, ease, reminders.
• For a diagrammatic representation of the behavioural insights model, please see page 2 of the full report summarised here.
   
• Human-Centred Design
  
  • * Use participatory methods that involve users in the design and development process.
  • * Prioritise people's needs and concrete experiences in the design of complex systems.
  • * Focus on the emotional triggers for behaviour and the user context.
  • * Feature rapid cycles of prototype development and testing prior to reaching a final design solution.
  • * Collect qualitative data in a way that is nimble/flexible/iterative.
  • * Emphasise craft/human skills, hands-on engagement with materials, and iterative methods that can yield insights about the practicality, perceived value, and potential adoption of an intervention.
  • * Reframe purely technical issues in relation to people's values and the broader human context of implementation.
• For a diagrammatic representation of the human-centred design model, please see page 13 of the full report summarised here.
   
• Questions: Do you agree? Are the starting principles and main approaches to social change and behaviour change essentially different? Are these substantive differences?

• What do these approaches look like in real life, with real people facing real issues in real contexts? Below are some examples:
   
• a. SOCIAL CHANGE
   
  
  • Joining Forces: CSOs and Media for Accountability in Bangladesh
     
  • Community and Provider-driven Social Accountability Intervention for Family Planning and Contraceptive Service Provision: Experiences from the Field
     
  • Fathers Matter
     
  • Priya's Mask
     
  • Minga Peru
     
  • Using Health Information for Community Activism: A Case Study of the Movement for Change and Social Justice in South Africa
     
  • FICE
     
  • Taaron Ki Toli (Gang of Stars)
     
  • WADADA News for Kids
     
  • Soul Buddyz Clubs
     
  • The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Reflections of 20 Years of Proving What We Do Matters
     
  • More than a cup of tea
     
  • Social Urbanism: The Case of Medellin, Colombia
     
  • Eight Weeks Eight Values One National Conversation
     
  • Youth Talk Project
     
  • Kembali Ke Hutan (Return to the Forest)
     
• b. BEHAVIOUR CHANGE
   
  
  • Mother's Time
     
  • Building Confidence in Routine Immunization in the Philippines
     
  • Expanding Access to Intrauterine Device Services in India (EAISI) Project
     
  • Scale-Up and Capacity Building in Behavioral Science to Improve the Uptake of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Services (SupCap)
     
  • Community-led Strategies to Aid Vaccine Acceptance: Five Case Studies from the Global South
     
  • Human-Centered Design Process and Solutions to Promote Malaria Testing and Treatment Seeking Behavior in Guyana Hinterlands
     
  • Theatre for Vaccine Hesitancy
     
  • Corona Bee Game
     
  • Talking Books to Facilitate Behaviour Change in Rural Communities in Ghana
     
  • Safal Shuruaat ('Successful Beginning')
     
  • Effect of a Mass Radio Campaign on Family Behaviours and Child Survival in Burkina Faso: A Repeated Cross-Sectional, Cluster-Randomised Trial
     
  • Effect of a Behaviour Change Intervention on the Quality of Peri-Urban Sanitation in Lusaka, Zambia: A Randomised Controlled Trial
     
  • A Combined Behavioral Economics and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Intervention to Reduce Alcohol Use and Intimate Partner Violence Among Couples in Bengaluru, India: Results of a Pilot Study
     
  • SMS Behaviour Change Communication and eVoucher Interventions to Increase Uptake of Cervical Cancer Screening in the Kilimanjaro and Arusha Regions of Tanzania: A Randomised, Double-blind, Controlled Trial of Effectiveness
     
  • Nutrition Behaviour Change Communication Causes Sustained Effects on IYCN Knowledge in Two Cluster-Randomised Trials in Bangladesh
     
• Question: Are these good representations of the in-action difference between social change and behaviour change?

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