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Fifty Years of Development Communication: What Works

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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




Click here to download a PDF version of this document

(requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)




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


 BeforeAfter
ACCESS  
Women who had heard or seen a message relating to prenatal care42%71%
KNOWLEDGE SHIFTS  
Women who remembered that edema was a danger sign during pregnancy2%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
  1. Focus on both individual and contextual factors in behavior change.
  2. Integrate top-down and bottom-up approaches.
  3. Have a tool-kit approach.
  4. Combine media and interpersonal communication.
  5. 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