Measuring Family Planning Social and Behavior Change
The Shared Agenda for SBC in the Ouagadougou Partnership region was developed to support coordination among governments, funders, and implementers seeking to advance FP in the OP countries through SBC interventions. It is reflected in several key goals of the emerging Ouagadougou Partnership strategy, such as increasing FP access for youth and addressing social norms. However, until SBC-relevant indicators are regularly and systematically measured, it will be difficult to demonstrate the full power and range of SBC approaches. The effectiveness of these approaches must be documented to maintain support for fully integrating SBC approaches into FP/RH work in the region. Breakthrough ACTION and Breakthrough RESEARCH’s joint presentation at the Ouagadougou Partnership Annual Meeting encouraged participants to think more widely about how SBC approaches could help their own SBC initiatives achieve their goals.
Breakthrough RESEARCH presented the results of an “indicator-mapping” exercise to demonstrate gaps in FP/RH-related SBC measurement in four Ouagadougou Partnership countries—Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Niger, and Togo. Out of over 1,500 indicators collected through the indicator-mapping activity, Breakthrough RESEARCH found that approximately 800 measured SBC-related factors. Of these, few focused on social norms, attitudes, or self-efficacy (all important ideational factors) or on provider behaviors (important influences on the client-provider interaction). Rather, the majority of the indicators measured output-level indicators (e.g., the number of condoms distributed or the number of activities conducted).