Scope, range and effectiveness of interventions to address social norms to prevent and delay child marriage and empower adolescent girls: A systematic review
Summary & Objectives
The paper aimed to assess the scope, range and effectiveness of interventions that seek to shift social norms to prevent or delay child marriage and empower adolescent girls. It classified interventions by methodological quality and by how comprehensively they addressed norms. It also sought to identify common features of successful programmes and gaps in evidence to guide future research and programming.
Findings
Twelve eligible interventions from low- and middle-income countries met the inclusion criteria of having experimental or quasi-experimental designs and measuring both norms and child marriage outcomes. Overall, there was stronger evidence for effects on child marriage behaviours than on social norms, and only a minority of programmes showed positive or mixed effects on either outcome. There was no clear pattern linking the intensity of norm-change programming with changes in norms or marriage, few studies measured norms among key reference groups beyond girls, and economic components appeared promising but the evidence remained limited.
Recommendations
The authors recommend clearer and shared definitions of social norms, explicit theories of change and validated tools to measure descriptive and injunctive norms separately from individual attitudes. Future interventions should identify and measure change among relevant reference groups and decision-makers, not only adolescent girls, and link programme activities more directly to the specific norms targeted. They also call for more rigorous mixed-method evaluations, greater attention to structural and economic interventions, and stronger accountability for implementing and measuring norms-change work when it is central to a programme’s goals.
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