An Innovative Methodology for Measuring the Results of Peacebuilding Media Interventions

Alice Rowley & Ratiba Taouti-Cherif

Why a new methodology?

Measuring the results of peacebuilding programs and attributing them to their interventions is one of the main challenges facing peacebuilding organizations.

SFCG uses media as a peacebuilding tool. Although SFCG’s external project evaluations identify listenership increase in knowledge, they fail to capture attitude change systematically.

Three main reasons for developing this methodology:

1. Whilst the usual range of monitoring and evalu-ation tools provide information on results, there is an “information gap” on the immediate and attributable results.

2. Following the analysis of a quantitative baseline, it became evident that the tools planned would not explain how any results had occurred; therefore a new tool was needed to provide more depth of information and analysis.

3. Finally, the need was identified for in-depth analysis of the effectiveness of the soap opera messages, the degree to which the story was entertaining and educational, and whether it was meeting key objectives in time to provide feedback and to make changes to future episodes.

Innovative?

It adapts the health sector “cohort” study approach (laboratory approach with intensive exposure) and Sesame Street’s formative research methodology* to evaluate peacebuilding media programs. It seeks to measure knowledge and attitude changes, and attribute these to a specific media intervention.

Lessons learned

1. One week research was too short to effectively measure attitude changes

2. Focus group discussions may have triggered a reflec-tion process that wouldn’t have happened otherwise

3. Need to design more participatory method surveys with qualitative methods that can be quantified (e.g. proportional piling technique)

4. Role-play activity was a stand-alone activity done towards the end of the study. Using role-play as a tool to map change before and after exposure will be explored

5. Although the tool proved to be flexible enough during a Nepal Bandh (national strike), it will be tested in other environments to its appropriateness to conflict settings

Conclusion & Next Steps

- Insightful and timely learning exercise for SFCG- Need to pilot the methodology again to verify new assumptions and test improved tools- Main challenge: Assess whether attitudes and behaviours changes can be “measured”.

Further research areas :

1. How to design mixed tools that can provide both qualitative and quantitative data and that are cultur-ally suitable?

2. How can behaviour change be verified? What methods can be used to verify that without long-term ethnographic observation?

3. On how many episodes should the methodology be tested to realistically expect changes?

4. Rethink the use of a control group from the same community – given the natural interaction between experimental and control group during regular social activities?

This methodology starts with the assumption that media affects attitude and behavior change and that by using a formative research approach on an experimental group over a relatively short period of time,

these effects can be measured and attributed to a given media intervention in a comprehensive, timely and cost effective way. The methodology was piloted in June 2007 in Nepal on Search for Common Ground’s (SFCG)youth-oriented radio soap opera ; which uses drama to address the root causes of conflicts and equip listeners with the necessary skills to manage those conflicts’ impact on their lives. Study indicators were based on the episodic drama intended outcomes.

Search for Common Ground would like to thank Rational Games, Inc. for funding this research project.

* Fisch, Shalom, and Rosemarie Truglio, eds. “G” is for Growing: Thirty Years of Research on Children and Sesame Street New Jersey : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001.

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