Fifty Years of Development Communication: What Works
Summary
Fifty Years of Development Communication: What Works
Presentation to the Inter-American Development Bank
July 1, 2003
by Silvio Waisbord, PhD
Senior Program Officer
The CHANGE Project
Academy for Educational Development
Alphabet soup of approaches in development communication
- Communication for development
- Communication for social change
- Information, education and communication
- Behavior change communication
- Social mobilisation
- Media advocacy
- Strategic communication
- Participatory communication
- Strategic participatory communication
Common misconceptions about communication in development
- ROLE
- Only necessary for a short period of time.
- Add-on to general planning and funding.
- IMPACT
- Information is enough to change behavior.
- Unrealistic expectations about needed time for effects.
- STRATEGY
- Media training is sufficient to address communication problems.
- New communication technologies solve information and behavior problems.
Development communication, definitions
- Instrument in development projects.
- Methodologies and tools to spread information and contribute to behavior change.
- The goal of development.
- Improve opportunities for community dialogue and access to information.
- Communication as citizenship, participation in political communities.
- Process of identifying, segmenting and targeting specific groups and audiences with particular strategies, messages and training programmes through various mass media and interpersonal channels, traditional and non-traditional (McKee 1992).
- A process of dialogue, information sharing, mutual understanding and agreement, and collective action (Rockefeller Foundation 2000).
Recent changes in practice
- Use data to set goals and strategies.
- Define target audiences.
- Conduct research on barriers, benefits and perceptions.
- Shift to strategic approaches
Vaccination Coverage of Children from 12 to 23 months
| Project Site (Time period of activities) |
Before Level (n)
| After Level (n) |
| Peru (1 month) |
25% (1,600) |
37% (251) |
| Ecuador (18 months) |
28% (510) |
52% (369) |
| Philippines (6 months) |
54% (446) |
64% (461) |
| Zaire (3 months) |
77% (418) |
82% (427) |
Source: HealthCom/AED
Cochabamba Reproductive Health Project
| |
Before |
After |
| ACCESS |
|
|
| Women who had heard or seen a message relating to prenatal care |
42% |
71% |
| KNOWLEDGE SHIFTS |
|
|
| Women who remembered that edema was a danger sign during pregnancy |
2% |
64% |
Source: The Manoff Group
Condom use in the last three months among youth
Dominican Republic 1999-2002
Source: AcciónSida/AED
What works: Five key ideas
- Focus on both individual and contextual factors in behavior change.
- Integrate top-down and bottom-up approaches.
- Have a tool-kit approach.
- Combine media and interpersonal communication.
- Community empowerment is key.
1. Focus on both individual and contextual factors
- Comprehensive approach to address factors that affect behavior.
- Consider behavior at individual, family, community, and policy levels.
2. Integrate top-down and bottom-up approaches
- Combination of actions by governments, donors, and civil society.
- Promote participation of actors at different levels.
Integrated communication strategies
3. Have a tool-kit approach
- Use techniques according to problems, priorities, and target groups.
- Take advantage of wide range of tools.
Uses of tools
- Mass media to reach large populations.
- Social marketing for audience segmentation, to identify perceived benefits, build programme brand and create demand.
- Social mobilisation to bolster participation and support outreach efforts.
- Media advocacy to gain support from governments and donors, and put issues in public agenda.
- Popular/folk media to generate dialogue and activate information networks.
4. Combine media and interpersonal communication
Media
- Important to raise awareness and knowledge.
- Massive reach.
- Stimulate social networks and peer conversation.
- Mobilise those predisposed to engage in desired behaviors.
Interpersonal communication
- Decisive for behavior change.
5. Community empowerment
- Community empowerment key for sustainability of projects.
- Promotes participation, which is intrinsic to any development project.
- Examples:
- Ciudadania en salud y municipios saludables en Peru.
- Community-based dengue prevention in El Salvador.
Challenges
- Attribution of effects.
- Development of indicators.
- Social norms.
- Community empowerment.
- Measurement of different kinds of effects.
- Long term or "Delayed" effects.
- Indirect or Unexpected effects.
- Replication of results and scaling up.
- Reaching "hard to reach" and "hard to convince" audiences.
Contact:
Silvio Waisbord, Ph.D.
silviowaisbord@hotmail.com
Placed on the Communication Initiative site August 14 2003
Last Updated July 06 2007
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