Associate Director CSBC
On 20 August 2020, the Centre for Social and Behaviour Change (CSBC) hosted a webinar
titled “Leveraging the Power of Narratives to Change Complex Behaviours”. This was the
third webinar hosted by the Centre as part of its #BehaviorallySpeaking series which
aims to tackle pertinent questions in the field of behavioral science and its impact on
knowledge, attitudes and practices, globally and nationally.
The webinar delved into the importance of Educational Entertainment (EE), or
“edutainment”, as a crucial tool for social and behaviour change, foregrounding its
theories, and highlighting its history, variety, scientific study, impact and policy
implications. Each of the five panelists, with vastly different engagement with the
field, spoke to the topic from their experiences. This allowed the audience to engage
with edutainment from multiple lenses, understanding it, at once, as a thoroughly
scientific intervention, a deeply human experience, a simple medium of communication and
an opportunity for nations to address pressing development problems.
Beyond the engaging speaker presentations, the audience participation through critical
observations, commentary and questions, added immense value to the discussion.
Senior Advisor, Centre for Social and Behaviour Change
The Centre for Social and Behaviour Change in collaboration with Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and Project Sanchar hosted the webinar “Behaviour Change Post Lockdown: Staying ahead of the COVID-19 curve” on 21 May 2020 to an extremely positive response by the community.
The discussion highlighted the role of behavioural strategies to support adherence to necessary protective behaviours against COVID-19 – especially at a time when lockdowns are ending across the world and the responsibility for disease prevention shifts from the state to individuals. Our panelists applied the lenses of their own experience and research to discuss strategies from perspectives of public health, psychology and behavioural science.
We would like to thank our lively audience for adding value through the numerous pertinent questions that were answered by the panel. We would also like to share some notable insights that emerged from this webinar for your reference:
Director, CSBC
In our first session, our panelists discussed how the global phenomena of fake news, misinformation and disinformation have heightened in a time of uncertainty, leading to individual actions that are less than rational. The collective impact of these individual actions on public health and safety was also explored. Our panel of wide-ranging experts also shared their insights and strategies for the current crisis.
Director of the Centre for Customer Insights, Yale School of Management
The webinar's objective was to understand the behaviourally informed approaches that could help increase adherence to the IFA supplementation with a special focus on the CBG (Choices-Beliefs-Goals) Framework.
The webinar was well-received by the audience that included senior officials of the UP Technical Support Unit, CSBC experts, directors and managers, and participants of several CSBC courses and NITI Aayog fellowships.
Jeffrey Breakenridge Keller Professor of Behavioral Science and Marketing, University of Chicago Booth School of Business
Director of Research, Centre for Social and Behaviour Change
A great deal of ink has been spilled on the subject of motivating and influencing others, but what happens when the person you most want to influence is you? Setting and achieving goals for yourself — at work, at home, and in relationships — is harder than it seems. With fascinating research from the field of motivation science and compelling stories of people who learned to motivate themselves, Get It Done by Dr Ayelet Fishbach illuminates invaluable strategies for pulling yourself in whatever direction you want to go — so you can achieve your goals while staying healthy, clear headed, and happy.
Dr Tim Müller, a quantitative social scientist and Junior Research Group Leader (Assistant Professor) of the projects "Migration and the Welfare State" and "Determinants of resilience towards radicalization in adolescence” was the keynote speaker at this webinar. Dr Pavan Mamidi, Director at the Centre for Social and Behaviour Change, gave the welcome address. Key insights from Dr Müller and his colleagues’ work on migration and welfare states include:
The session also included a discussion on the factors that bolster narratives against migration, including media effects and political motivation, and policies that support migrant workers.
Technical Director, Passages Project at the Institute for Reproductive Health
Country Director of PCI India
Senior Fellow – Qualitative Research, at the Centre for Social and Behaviour Change (CSBC)
Director of Social and Behaviour Change Communication of PCI India
India Lead, Social Impact, Education, and Communities at Facebook
Regional Director, South Asia Region at WaterAID
Director at International Center for Research on Women (ICRW)
Executive Director of the Population Foundation of India
Given the recent growth of the number of researchers and practitioners working in the
field of social and behavior change, it is a critical moment to make the latest
knowledge and evidence on social norms widely accessible and provide opportunities for
practitioners and researchers from different disciplines and sectors to share and
produce knowledge. Social norms expertise currently rests in a small group of global
“experts,” which is inadequate to meet the demand for assistance to guide social norms
practice and research. This learning network will support effective programming that
addresses the norms that influence critical health and development issues by
strengthening social norms expertise at the implementation level, where it matters most.
The webinar is the launch event of the South Asia Learning Collaborative, officially
inviting participation from interested organizations and people working or wanting to
work with social norms in South Asia.
Technical Director, Passages Project at the Institute for Reproductive Health
Country Director of PCI India
Senior Program Officer, Center of Child and Human Development, Georgetown University's
Program Officer, Center of Child and Human Development, Georgetown University's
Senior Fellow – Qualitative Research, at the Centre for Social and Behaviour Change
Director, Gender and Adolescent Girls, PCI India
Given the recent growth of the number of researchers and practitioners working in the
field of social and behaviour change, it is a critical moment to make the latest
knowledge and evidence on social norms widely accessible and provide opportunities for
practitioners and researchers from different disciplines and sectors to share and
produce knowledge.
This workshop built on the SA-SNLC's promise to improve practice towards the use of
social norms. Our facilitators guided participants through the assessment of social
norms to inform programme design and implementation strategies through two sessions
spread out over two days.
The takeaways from the workshop were:
Director of Social and Behaviour Change Communication at PCI India
IAS, CEO, JEEViKA
Program Director, PRADAN
Deputy Director, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Associate, Centre for Social and Behaviour Change
Advisor (Adolescent Health and Gender), USAID
Director of Research, Centre for Social and Behaviour Change
Director, Gender and Adolescent Girls, PCI India
There has been a rise in women’s collective action in South Asia. The focus of these
programmes is uplifting women’s social and economic status, and they have presented an
opportunity to foster women’s groups for collective action. A gamut of evidence from
this region shows how such grassroots platforms of women have pushed boundaries to shift
regressive social norms. However, there is not enough discussion on the nuanced role of
women’s collectives in altering social norms. While many of these programmes do not
intend norm shifts, they do change norms while working towards their objectives. The
theory of change of such interventions or programmes, once drawn, can be adopted by
policymakers and implementers to ensure large scale impact.
The session focused on the role of the collectives as agents of social and gender norm
change. While such collectives often do not pursue norm change as an outcome, their
activities result in normative change by challenging patriarchal regimes. Through this
session, the SA-SNLC brought together a panel of key stakeholders to discuss the role of
women’s collectives in catalysing norm change.
The takeaways from the workshop were:
Executive Director and Founder, Shanthi Maargam
WaterAid, Bangladesh
Program Director, PRADAN
Mumkin App
Mumkin App
Digital Green
Digital Green
Breakthrough, India
Breakthrough, India
To mark a year since the launch of the South Asia Social Norms Learning Collaborative,
this webinar was an interactive session that leveraged the knowledge within the
community.
Norm-shifting programmes or programmes that have significant norm-shifting components
are few and far between in South Asia. This session will brought together academics and
practitioners from reputed organisations in the region to discuss their work on
norm-shifting and share their learnings.
Global Creative Advisor at BBC Media Action
Senior Private Sector Advisor for Abt Associates.
Senior Technical Advisor, Gender Justice team, CARE USA
Senior Advisor, Strategic Partnership and Knowledge Learning at Alive & Thrive
This webinar addressed the issues of moving from theory to practice in social norms programming. Our panellists, experts in norm change programming in the areas of nutrition, gender, and health, shared their knowledge of how best to navigate these challenges with examples from successful on-ground interventions. They used case studies of their research, highlighting the underlying theoretical frameworks, ToCs, their interventions, and results, to demonstrate best practices associated with social norms programming. Awareness of the same will help increase the effectiveness of interventions addressing social norms in the field.
Director of Social and Behaviour Change Communication at PCI India
Professor of Psychology and Director of the Center for Applied Cognitive Science (CACS) at the University of Texas at Austin
Senior Program Officer, Behavioural Insights, India Country Office of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Director, Centre for Social and Behaviour Change
The dynamics between societal and individual expectations, beliefs and preferences play
an elemental role in shaping behaviour. There are several cognitive and behavioural
biases that hinder people’s motivation, ability or even opportunities to perform various
actions. Social norms can be leveraged within such behaviour change interventions to
positively influence and create impact! The study of social norms intersects with
behaviour science at many points: norms signal appropriate behaviour and set behavioural
expectations or rules within a group of people. They are also key to many behaviour
change interventions, especially when the goal is en masse, sustained behaviour change.
Using a 360-degree behaviour change approach with a combination of communication and
non-communication interventions can have the desired results.
In this webinar, hosted by the South Asia Social Norms Learning Collaborative (SA-SNLC),
the panellists discussed the ways in which social norms influence and regulate
behaviour, and shared insights that can be drawn from behavioural science on the subject
of norm change.
Senior Research Officer, Passages Project, Institute for Reproductive Health (IRH) at Georgetown University
Director of Social and Behaviour Change Communication at PCI India
Technical Director, Passages Project at the Institute for Reproductive Health
This workshop built on the SA-SNLC’s promise to build capacity among local implementers as well as researchers who are new to the field of social norms programming. Through two sessions spread out over two days, our facilitators imparted crucial foundational knowledge on social norms to participants. The highly interactive session format allowed in-depth exploration of and discussion on the fundamentals of social norms and provided budding researchers with key insights on implementation and budding implementers with a basic theoretical grounding of their work.
The takeaways from the workshop were:
Senior Program Officer, Center of Child and Human Development, Georgetown University
Program Officer, Center of Child and Human Development, Georgetown University
This workshop built on the SA-SNLC's promise to improve practice towards use of social norms. Our facilitators guided participants through the measurement of social norms. The highly interactive session format allowed in-depth exploration of design, implementation, and evaluation challenges and solutions for community-based social and behaviour change (SBC) projects engaging in, expanding, or planning to expand normative change efforts.
The takeaways from the workshop were:
Chief of Party with USAID’s MOMENTUM Country Global Leadership: India-Yash
Senior Research Specialist, Centre for Social and Behaviour Change
Senior Program Officer, Behavioural Insights, India Country Office of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
The role of social norms in influencing and shaping human behaviour is beyond debate. Behaviour change practitioners and policymakers recognise that to influence behaviours, it is important to understand how social norms work and to understand how they interact with numerous other influencers or drivers of behaviour situated in complex ecosystems. This is especially true in collective multicultural societies like those found in South Asia, where religion, caste, class, ethnicity, tribalism, and regionalism influence group norms in different ways.
It is equally important to recognise that norms researchers need to be empathetic to the people and cultures being researched so that the right behaviours and the right drivers are captured, more so when we realise that norms that are often resistant to change. Last, the role of donor organisations cannot be underscored in ensuring the smooth running of research studies or intervention programmes. Thus, this event was an honest and introspective discussion between researchers, practitioners, and donors, one that is vital for sustainable and conscientious norm shifts going forward.