Essentials Resources

Social norms are informal rules governing behaviors and practices within societies, influencing people's behavior and perpetuating harmful health practices and inequities. The Learning Collaborative has identified resources to help programmers identify and understand the influence of social norms. These resources address four phases: orientation, formative, design, and implementation. In the orientation phase, resources provide background information on social norms, including the Learning Collaborative Social Norms Background Reader and Social Norms: A Review by Adrienne Chung and Rajiv Rimal. During the formative phase, resources aid in social norms diagnosis, such as the Social Norms Exploration Tool by Georgetown University's Institute for Reproductive Health and A Structured Approach to a Diagnostic of Collective Practices by Cristina Bicchieri, Jan W. Lindemans, and Ting Jiang. These tools help programmers understand the influence of social norms on adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health. In the design phase, resources focus on designing norms-shifting interventions, including Social Norms and AYSRH: Building a Bridge from Theory to Program Design by the Learning Collaborative to Advance Normative Change and Using Social Norms Theory for Health Promotion in Low-Income Countries by Beniamino Cislaghi and Lori Heise. These resources provide guidance on applying social norms theory to program design. During the implementation phase, resources address implementation, monitoring, and evaluation, as well as scale-up considerations. Considerations for Scaling Up Norms-Shifting Interventions for Adolescent and Youth Sexual and Reproductive Health by the Learning Collaborative to Advance Normative Change and Costing of Norms-Shifting Interventions by the Learning Collaborative to Advance Normative Change provide guidance on scaling up norms-shifting interventions. The Learning Collaborative's resources are available online at WWW.ALIGNPLATFORM.ORG/LEARNING-COLLABORATIVE.