Audience Segmentation for Malaria

Social and behavior change (SBC) strategies are critical for encouraging positive behaviors and addressing social and structural barriers around malaria prevention and case management. SBC can foster an increased utilization of health services, improved client-provider interactions, and the proper diagnosis and treatment for malaria.

To increase the effectiveness of SBC strategies, program planners need to understand the intended audience(s) of SBC efforts and the factors driving their behavior. Audience segmentation is a technique that divides a population into groups with similar characteristics related to a topic or behavior of interest, enabling a deeper understanding of the demographic factors, norms, and attitudes that drive malaria-related behavior among each group. The use of audience segmentation can help SBC practitioners develop interventions and messages tailored to each group’s particular characteristics and needs.

This course is intended for use by social and behavior change (SBC) and service delivery professionals to encourage appropriate use of malaria tests and treatment by employing segmentation based on attitudes and behaviors of their intended audience(s).

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Measuring SBC Program or Campaign Exposure

Social and behavior change (SBC) programs use different methods, such as mass media and interpersonal communication, to reach target audiences. Determining the extent to which target audiences are exposed to SBC approaches requires strategies that are specific to the approach. For example, household surveys can assess exposure to a mass media campaign while social media listening can evaluate exposure to a social media campaign. SBC programs can use exposure measures to assess respondent awareness, sentiment, and comprehension of a campaign message.  Practitioners should tailor exposure methods and measures  to address measurement challenges, such as selective attention and social desirability bias. Understanding levels of exposure to SBC programs and campaigns informs implementation, determines budgets that most effectively leverage program resources, and determines the program’s overall effectiveness.

This course aims to support SBC programs by providing an overview of SBC program or campaign exposure measures, including measurement challenges and how to minimize error. It provides examples of questions and data sources, along with explanations for how exposure data can inform SBC programs. This course is comprised of three short instructional videos that last between 10–15 minutes.

Breakthrough RESEARCH has designed this course for monitoring and evaluation officers to help them understand how to capture and use SBC exposure data to inform, monitor, and evaluate SBC program performance. While the steps presented include examples specific to family planning programs, any SBC program can make use of them.

Measuring Provider Behavior Change

Provider behavior defines a range of actions that include but are not limited to facility management, adherence to clinical protocols, supervision, and client-provider interaction. Moreover, these behaviors are the result of a complex set of factors, both internal (e.g., attitudes, values, and beliefs) and external (e.g., supervisor support, access to professional development, and a supportive workplace environment). Understanding what drives provider behaviors and how they impact client-level outcomes is key to improving health services.

Providers’ behavior can significantly influence patients’ experiences of health service and their likelihood to adhere to treatment or recommendations, and potentially alter patients’ likelihood to re-engage with health services for improved health outcomes. Increasingly, experts recognize that adequate health worker training and structural support (e.g., availability of commodities and consultation room privacy) are not sufficient to provide high-quality health services. Social and behavior change (SBC) programs have introduced strategies to improve health worker performance. However, current understanding of how to measure provider behavior and provider behavior change (PBC) is limited. 

This course aims to support Social and Behavior Change (SBC) programs by helping program planners and designers better understand provider behavior change initiatives and their impact on service delivery and quality. The course is also meant to advance measurement of PBC by providing frameworks and illustrative examples of how PBC measurement can inform program planning and design. This course is comprised of two short instructional videos that last between 10-15 minutes. The videos are accompanied by a How to Brief that students can print for easy reference. 

Breakthrough RESEARCH developed this course for program managers and mid­-level professionals who are interested in gaining a better understanding of provider behavior, PBC approaches, and how to measure the outcomes of these approaches. While the steps presented include examples specific to family planning programs, SBC practitioners can apply them to any program.

Applying Segmentation to Social and Behavior Change in Family Planning

This course provides insight into how segmentation can be a valuable asset in implementing social and behavior change programming within family planning and other health areas. The course will provide a brief overview on how to complete segmentation and more extensive content on how to apply the results to programming. Student will complete the course with a greater appreciation for the value of segmentation and how it could help their own organization’s efforts.

Social and Behavior Change Program Monitoring

Successful social and behavior change (SBC) programs depend on careful and consistent monitoring. Monitoring is an ongoing process to ensure that an SBC program is on track to achieve its goals and objectives. When SBC program situations change, as they almost always do, monitoring can enable program activities to adapt to the new circumstances and identify how well they adapt.

The SBC Program Monitoring course will provide learners with a foundation in monitoring for any type of programmatic intervention. The course is part of a comprehensive learning suite that includes a collection of resources to assist program staff to monitor their SBC programs by drawing upon proven tools and case studies. The course equips learners to design their own monitoring strategy.

Evidence-Based Malaria Social and Behavior Change Communication: From Theory to Program Evaluation

This e-learning series provides an overview on how to use data to make social and behavior change communication (SBCC) interventions more robust, with a focus on malaria. This includes strategies to encourage the long-term adoption of behaviors related to malaria, such as sleeping under a net and seeking care for fever for various target audiences: pregnant women, providers, and children under five, for example.  

If you are interested in how to make your malaria prevention SBCC program more robust or improve your ability to measure the outcomes of your program, then take this course, which consists of five modules. 

Module 1: Telling Stories About Behavior: Theory As Narrative is presented by Doug Storey and will introduce participants to some of the basic theories used in SBCC, using examples specific to malaria. 

Module 2: Formative Research for SBCC: Do You Know Your Audience? is presented by Michelle R. Kaufman and will introduce participants to the basics of formative research for informing SBCC programs, using examples specific to malaria. 

Module 3: Pretesting: A Critical Step to Ensuring SBCC Effectiveness is presented by Rupali Limaye and will introduce participants to the critical steps in pretesting SBCC interventions, using examples specific to malaria. 

Module 4: Monitoring Malaria SBCC Interventions is presented by Hannah Koenker and will introduce participants to various approaches and indicators for monitoring malaria SBCC activities. 

Module 5: Evaluating Social and Behavior Change Communication is presented by Marc Boulay and will introduce participants to techniques for evaluating and attributing causality to SBCC interventions, using examples specific to malaria.

Social and Behavior Change 101: An Introduction

This is a skill shot—or short course—for program managers, donor organizations, and family planning/reproductive health (FP/RH) practitioners to learn how social and behavior change (SBC) interventions can guide and amplify the effectiveness of FP/RH. The course is structured around the three steps of the SBC Flow Chart developed by Breakthrough ACTION: (1) Define, (2) Design and Test, and (3) Apply. With clear examples and short exercises, this course illustrates the importance of strategically designing SBC programs for FP/RH, including monitoring and evaluation. Allowing for pauses to complete three short exercises, this course is two hours long.

Monitoring and Evaluating SBC Approaches

This course aims to support Social and Behavior Change (SBC) programs by explaining how programs can develop a robust theory-driven monitoring and evaluation plan that provides evidence that can strengthen implementation and support program evaluation. This course is comprised of three short instructional videos that last between 10-15 minutes. The three videos are accompanied by a How to Brief that students can print for easy reference.

Learning Objectives

  • Understand how to build a project theory of change that incorporates SBC theory
  • Learn the types of quantitative indicators that are useful to measure in an SBC program
  • Learn how data can help to tell your story and explain whether the programme reached the desired outcome