Social Norms Programming and Measurement: Short e-Course

"...takes the learner on an emotive, cognitive and content journey..."

Developed by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and partners, this online course explores different dimensions of social norms, provides guidance for designing norms-shifting interventions, and presents tools to measure social norms change. With a focus on harmful practices - in particular, child marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM) - the course introduces participants to the foundations and characteristics of well-designed social norms change programmes, as described in the UNICEF social norms programming guide "Everybody Wants to Belong".

This online course is applicable to: UNICEF staff and partners working on social and behaviour change (SBC) on harmful practices; UNICEF and UNFPA programme managers engaged in the Global Programme to End Child Marriage, the UN Joint Programme to eliminate FGM, in the Spotlight programme to end violence against women and girls, and/or those working on these agendas; and SBC, child protection, and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) practitioners.

The course is structured as a series of 3 modules, with videos, handouts, knowledge checks, discussion forums, practice activities, and surveys to consolidate learning. The course is open to self-enrollment and take approximately 6 hours to complete (2 hours per module).

Through these modules, learners are expected to become familiar with social norms terms and concepts and explore how these influence behaviours. They will be introduced to conceptual models such as the Behavioural Drivers Model and the Socio-Ecological Model to understand the diverse factors that can shape social norms, intention, and action.

Case studies and examples of programmes addressing child marriage and FGM are used to introduce participants to the skills necessary to design and implement social norms interventions, with opportunities to practice and apply the learning.

In the last section, the course dives into existing approaches and tools that help measure social norms change, introducing learning to key indicators and frameworks, such as the ACT Framework for measuring social norms change related to FGM.