"Campaigns are likely to be more successful when they include messages about legal penalties for non-compliant behaviour and fresh information, and when they reach a large proportion of the intended audience. Digital campaigns must therefore work alongside laws and policies. Legislation can be a key
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tool in changing behaviour and perceptions of cultural and social norms. Laws and policies that make violent behaviour an offence send a message to society that it is not acceptable.
Success is more likely if messages are tailored to audiences using social marketing principles and create a supportive environment that enables the intended audience to make changes – e.g. by mobilising communities in support of the campaign.
To develop effective campaigns, it is also important to use research, such as interviews with key stakeholders and focus groups with members of the target audience, to determine existing attitudes and beliefs and ways of motivating people to change their behaviour.
Campaign messages should also be pre-tested to ensure they are understood correctly and to minimize any unintended negative effects.
The most successful interventions work with experienced organisations to develop and deliver sophisticated television/radio programming and communications combined with community mobilisation strategies aimed at changing gender-related norms and behaviours." (Overview, page 3)
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"UNICEF and the Government of Montenegro implemented a communication strategy "It's about ability" to challenge the existing, exclusionary practices and promote new, inclusive social norms for children with disability. Drawing on communication for development principles and social norms theory, a 20
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10-2013 nation-wide campaign mobilized disability rights NGOs, parents associations, media and private sector to stimulate inclusive attitudes and practices towards children with disabilities. As a result, the percentage of citizens who find it acceptable for a child with disability to attend the same class with theirs increased from 35 before the campaign to 80 percent at the end of it. Similarly, the percentage of Montenegrin citizens who find it acceptable for a child with disability to be the best friend of their child increased from 22 before the campaign to 51 percent at the end of it. The campaign was participatory, audience-centred and guided by the key communication planning principles." (Abstract)
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"There is a strong evidence base showing that SBCC programs can help improve malaria prevention and treatment behaviors. However, more work needs to be done to ensure that best practices are documented and used consistently. The review provides recommendations for strengthening peer-reviewed researc
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h papers by including strategic communication processes in journal articles. Reporting program exposure is essential for establishing the role of SBCC interventions in malaria prevention and treatment behaviors." (Conclusions)
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"Through a careful review of the evidence, this briefing offers a spirited case for why donors, practitioners and developing country governments need to pay more attention to the role of communication in tackling global health. The briefing finds that: Communication has been central to public health
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developments from Ebola to polio and from HIV to child survival. While health policy officials recognise the importance of health communication, it often remains poorly funded, under-utilised and badly planned in public health programmes. Even when it does prioritise communication, public health programming often fails to reflect best practice around the role of social and behaviour change communications (SBCC). Progress has been stymied by the complexity of social and behaviour change communication, debates around “what counts” as evidence, and the learning and capacity-strengthening gaps within the health communication field. Donors should ensure that their staff are familiar with the health communication evidence base and lessons learned from past programmes, so that they are equipped to plan and evaluate proposals for new communication interventions effectively." (BBC Media Action website)
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"The first International SBCC Summit 2016 brought together the global community of social and behavior change communication (SBCC) organizations, practitioners and researchers from February 8 - 10, 2016, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The three-day event offered talks from SBCC field practitioners, a mar
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ket fair of tools, skills-building workshops, and panels on methodologies, programs and research. Blue Sky sessions allowed participants to consider the way forward in elevating the science and art of SBCC. Twenty-four technical panels and 10 preformed panels were created from the more than 600 abstracts received. Topics ranged from HIV and Ebola to nutrition and sanitation." (Introduction)
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"Here we discuss a unique and innovative radio-based approach to improving mental health literacy and creating a demand for mental health services—part of a larger project called 'An Integrated Approach to Addressing the Issue of Youth Depression in Malawi and Tanzania'. Grounded in theories of so
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cial and behavior change communication and edutainment, and leveraging participatory methodologies, Farm Radio International and partners Teen Mental Health and Farm Radio Trust in Malawi worked with local radio broadcasters in Malawi and Tanzania to design and deliver weekly, interactive youth radio shows about mental health. Ongoing engagement with the content, and deliberation over the messages, was facilitated through SMS feedback mechanisms, and mobile polls and quizzes delivered through the radio stations, along with school-based radio listening clubs that met weekly to listen to the programs and discuss the themes in a group. Over the course of the 45-month project, the radio shows gained immense popularity, in large part because they talked about issues that are important to youth, and incorporated the language youth use and music they prefer. The programs attracted an average of 500,000 listeners each week, and received tens of thousands of text messages and Facebook posts by young people giving feedback, telling the radio hosts about what topics they would like to hear about, and asking questions about mental health or requesting to be connected with a mental health expert. The impact of the radio was measured according to whether and to what extent the interactive media programs play a role in triggering or facilitating drivers of the process of change. These drivers include bringing about improvements in knowledge and attitudes, mobilizing a social movement, and facilitating greater social and public support to put mental health on the agenda as a topic of conversation, grounded in new understandings and new knowledge. Our findings demonstrate that an interactive radio campaign can have a marked effect on improving knowledge, decreasing stigma, and increasing demand for mental health services among youth in sub-Saharan Africa. Youth who listened to the radio programs fare better than their peers in understanding the signs and symptoms of mental health disorders and in knowing where to go if they or someone they know needs help. Further, interactive radio programs can have a direct impact on reducing stigmatizing attitudes, frequently recognized as a crucial element in promoting improved access to care." (Executive summary)
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"This paper on behavior change constitutes one of two methodology papers (the other being on service delivery) that establish a new lens through which to understand the World Bank’s portfolio in IEG (Independent Evaluation Group) evaluations. The paper outlines the economic and psychosocial theori
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es that have led to an array of frameworks for helping policy makers design behaviorally conscious interventions. After establishing criteria for an evaluative behavior change framework suitable for World Bank projects and finding that none of the existing frameworks fits that set of criteria, this paper proposes a new framework, CrI2SP, which categorizes elements of World Bank projects, and introduces an evaluative framework for capturing the degree to which behavioral considerations have been integrated into World Bank projects. The CrI2SP framework and the coding template have been developed and refined as they have been applied to 33 World Bank projects." (Summary)
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"Project locations experienced general improvement with regards to social cohesion and conflict resolution. This was particularly the case in Wau, where results were encouraging. In contrast, Bor continued to feature more negative results than other project locations, although the county saw importa
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nt improvements since the undertaking of the baseline study in January 2015. This suggests a general positive impact of project activities. Indeed, project activities were at large seen as effective in fostering peacebuilding among local communities. Respondents held particularly positive views about the role of [the radio talkshow] Hiwar al Shabab in the promotion of peacebuilding. In contrast, the sustainability of the trainings and theatre performances, and divergent expectations and miscommunication within the UNICEF-SFCG partnership were highlighted as the weak links in the implementation of the programme. Despite this, research participants underscored the potential for media as a useful tool for peacebuilding." (Page 2)
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"Welcome to the Communication for Humanitarian Action Toolkit, CHAT. It has been designed with practitioners in mind and is a resource that you can work with and adapt as you strive towards your communication for humanitarian action goals. The toolkit provides guidance to humanitarian and developmen
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t organizations in the area of emergency communication strategy design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. It addresses several important aspects of communication during emergencies. These include a focus on providing essential emergency warnings, as well as communication that promotes behaviour change, community mobilization and action. Well-planned communication can help to promote community resilience and reduce vulnerability to a wide range of disasters and emergency situations." (Publisher description)
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"The planning steps included in this implementation kit provide guidance on how to develop a communication strategy for social and behavior change communication (SBCC). The steps and tools are designed to help program managers, communication specialists and relevant stakeholders prepare and plan for
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effective SBCC initiatives through a comprehensive approach that responds to audience needs and the context of the challenge(s) to be addressed, uses a memorable identity and theme for all messages and activities, and outlines plans for implementation, monitoring and evaluation." (Introduction)
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"This study is a descriptive literature review. The purpose of this literature review is to describe factors which associate behavior and behavior change in the communities and to describe communication and communication methods which have been used in behavior change communication programs in devel
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oping countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. The objective of the study is to provide information about health behavior communication in community and used methods which can be utilized in behavior change campaign in developing countries.
The study followed the process of descriptive literature review. After the identification of the research question, data were collected from the scientific databases, Academic Search Premier and ProQuest, and manually from the other sources between February and August 2015. 39 researches were accepted to this review, most of them were published in 2009 or after and conducted by the quantitative method. Data were analyzed by the descriptive synthesis. The synthesis produced seven main themes which contained factors related behavior and behavior change and communication.
Communal and personal issues, culture, education and knowledge, economy and access to goods are related to behavior and behavior change as well as way of communication. The above mentioned issues, both individual and community are interwoven to each other and therefore behavior change need to be seen in wider context. Community’s influence on behavior is stronger in comparison with the individual’s own capability to behavior change and therefore the involvement of the community from the beginning is a key issue for the success of behavior change campaigns. Various media channels can be used to deliver the message of behavior change and combination of many communication methods such as mass media and personal communication predicts better outcome." (Abstract)
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"In many—if not most—countries of the modern world, radio is thought of as a provider of music, news, weather reports and traffic situations, but very little else. Yet in parts of the developing world, radio is still extremely important and valuable as a medium for encouraging and teaching life
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improvement. This book demonstrates and teaches how radio drama—be it stand alone or serial drama—can be very influential in helping people to improve their lives." (Prologue)
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"Entertainment-education for Health Behaviour Change: Issues and Perspectives in Africa is a collection of essays from some of the leading scholars in entertainment-education, including writers from South Africa, Nigeria, and the United States. Chapters cover a wide range of application and strategi
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es for entertainment-education, from mass media campaigns to participatory communication for behaviour change in health interventions including polio eradication and HIV/AIDS. Through reviews of past programmes and discussions of areas of potential research, these scholars highlight an emerging approach that is set to change health education and behaviour change strategies around the world." (Publisher description)
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"This chapter documents the experience of the Communication for Change (C-Change) project in developing and rolling out a holistic and comprehensive socioecological approach to social and behavior change communication (SBCC) within the context of a donor-funded program with short term goals. C-Chang
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e's SBCC framework uses a socioecological model for change. This model views social and behavior change as a product of multiple, overlapping levels of influence as well as political and environmental factors. The “health belief model” helps to find out why audience's perceptions are not in favor of change in the search for tipping points for change. The chapter describes three characteristics of SBCC. The key models and concepts of the C-Change's SBCC framework are incorporated into at least 75 government programs in Africa. The advocacy and social mobilization strategies of SBCC are aimed at ensuring sustainability through host government “buy-in” and support." (Summary)
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