A structured approach to a diagnostic of collective practices

Abstract

“How social norms change” is not only a theoretical question but also an empirical one. Many organizations have implemented programs to abandon harmful social norms. These programs are standardly monitored and evaluated with a set of empirical tools. While monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of changes in objective outcomes and behaviors is well-developed, we will argue that M&E of changes in the wide range of beliefs and preferences important to social norms is still problematic. In this paper, we first present a theoretical framework and then show how it should guide social norms measurement. As a case study, we focus on the harmful practice of child marriage. We show how an operational theory of social norms can guide the design of surveys, experiments, and vignettes. We use examples from existing research to illustrate how to study social norms change.

Child Marriage and Intimate Partner Violence in Rural Bangladesh: A Longitudinal Multilevel Analysis

“…To construct this measure, we used information on the age at first marriage from recently married women who completed the marriage-screening module at baseline ( n = 3,909). Our choice to create this village-level measure was based on theory (Bicchieri et al 2014; Kandiyoti 1988) that the collective practice of very early child marriage has been a historical gender norm that has sustained institutionalized male dominance. We used data from only recently married women (as opposed to recently married women and senior married women) to construct this measure because of large generational differences in women’s age at first marriage and schooling attainment in Bangladesh (NIPORT et al 2013), so this measure captures the gender norm among women in the same marriage cohort.…”

“…A social norm is a collective practice that people follow based on social expectations about what others do and think should be done (Bicchieri et al 2014). Gender norms , in turn, are collective practices that men and women follow based on social expectations about how other men and women behave or think men and women should behave.…”

“…Following social norm theory (Bicchieri et al 2014), a woman’s deviation from the gender norm in her community may elevate her risk of experiencing IPV, and evidence from Bangladesh favors this hypothesis. Namely, a woman’s short-term participation in microcredit has been associated with a higher risk of IPV in more socially conservative areas, where such participation likely has been seen as deviant; however, such participation was not associated with IPV in less conservative areas (Koenig et al 2003).…”

Adolescent Relationship Violence in Brazil and Honduras

“…Heise (2013), a social norm is a pattern of behavior motivated by a desire to conform to the shared social expectations of an important reference group, i.e., people within and who influence that group. Also see Bicchieri et al, 2014;Markus & Harper, 2014. As this study will show, rigid, inequitable gender norms are often accompanied by violence, whereas more equitable norms tend to be protective against violence. It is important to note that, even though the norms identified (which are characteristic of the sites and the specific reference groups investigated) may be generalizable to similar urban and rural sites, they are not necessarily prevalent for all of Brazil or Honduras.…”

“…Research demonstrates the ways in which social norms related to gender shape behaviors around relationships and influence outcomes related to sexuality, violence, health, education, child marriage, and other factors influencing adolescent relationships (see Bicchieri et al, 2014;Mackie, 2015;Markus & Harper, 2014). Inequitable gender norms have a positive association with adolescent IPV risk (and vice-versa with equitable norms), rendering the understanding of norms an essential aspect of this research.…”