Social Norms and AYSRH: Building a Bridge from Theory to Program Design

"Social norms matter because they influence and uphold behavior, and because they reinforce social inequities including gender inequities..."

Evidence demonstrates that, to achieve sustained and meaningful improvements in adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health (AYSRH), programmes must attend to social norms - beliefs about which behaviours are appropriate within a given group of people. Experience highlights the importance of collaborating with communities (from the beginning and throughout the programme cycle), and using an ethical approach, to shift norms to promote positive AYSRH outcomes. The Learning Collaborative to Advance Normative Change (Learning Collaborative), a global network, has written this document for programme managers and designers to serve as a bridge between recent advances in social norms theory and evidence and effective programme design. The insights here are culled from practice-based evidence, from the experience of Learning Collaborative members, and from empirical results of social norms research.

The document distills academic information about social norms into readily-usable definitions and concepts, and it offers multiple examples of how real-life programmes have bridged the gap from academic research and theory on one side, to program design and application on the other. The document is not, itself, a how-to guide: where appropriate, it points programmers to guides and manuals (including some written by the Learning Collaborative) that are specifically designed for social norms programmers.

Section I summarises emerging consensus on social norms: what they are, why they matter, and several key elements of social norms that programmers may want to understand prior to designing effective interventions. Section II looks at how social constructs such as political systems, economies, and power structures affect behaviours. (Figure 2 on page 16 presents a series of questions about the historical, political, religious, social, and economic factors drivers that contribute to the formation and maintenance of social norms, and to their dissolution. The questions, which underscore the need to take power holders into account when attempting to shift social norms, may be adapted and added to programmers' planned formative research, social norms exploration, and community meetings.)

Section III defines 8 features of social norms, divided into 2 categories: (i) question assumptions and explore contextual nuances; and (ii) apply insights to the design of a norms-shifting programme. The features are:

1. Norms related to the behaviour(s) of interest can be both harmful and protective.
2. Norms are embedded in a system of structural drivers that intersect and sustain the behaviour(s).
3. Not all norms have the same strength.
4. Norms can be aligned or misaligned with attitudes.
5. Norms are sustained by several reference groups with different influence.
6. Power holders may resist - or support - change.
7. Holders of positive deviant attitudes almost always exist.
8. People can decide to do the "wrong" thing.

Case examples, drawn from real programmes (see Tables 2-5), demonstrate how the 8 features of social norms provide relevant information to connect theory to programme design.

Section IV reviews several behaviour change theories that may be useful to the design of social norms-shifting programmes. Section V prepares the reader to develop a theory of change as part of programme design, offering the following characteristics of a good theory of change development process: It is participatory; it is based on what is known; it achieves a helpful level of detail; it is diagrammed; and it is documented and revisited regularly over the life of the programme. To illustrate this process, the document offers 3 examples of real-life AYSRH programmes and the theories that guided their work: Girl Effect, CARE's Tipping Point, and Tearfund's Masculinité, Famille et Foi.

Finally, Section VI discusses the importance of anticipating implementation challenges (e.g., adaptation to a new setting, and resistance to social norms shifts and to new practices) and designing programmes to prevent or militate against these challenges, to the extent possible. "Programs can also help community leadership structures to expand their influence and mediate emerging problems, including where people feel social pressure to conform to norms. Ethically, such strategies are important and contribute to supporting and sustaining norm change."