Passages' Social Norms Training Curriculum - Institute for Reproductive Health

Norms play a significant role in behavior change across sectors. What an individual believes others do and what others expect of them can strongly influence how individuals act. The Passages Project has developed a five-module social norms training curriculum that explores social norms concepts, program approaches, and the benefits and challenges of engaging in normative change efforts. Participants will consider what their projects are doing and can do to address normative shifts, what they can hope to accomplish within project timeframes, and the types of partnerships needed to facilitate such work.

The full curriculum, with facilitator materials, is available for download. It’s necessary to fully read all facilitator materials, below, before you begin to effectively prepare for and deliver this training.

This curriculum was created under the Passages Project. It was made possible through generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under the terms of the under Cooperative Agreement No. AID-OAA-A-15-00042. The contents are the responsibility of the Institute for Reproductive Health and do not necessarily reflect the views of Georgetown University, USAID, or the United States Government. This product is watermarked. We ask that you preserve the watermarks whenever possible, and to credit the Passages Project for this material.

Facilitator Materials

Please download and carefully review all resources below, starting with the Facilitator Guide.

Facilitator Materials in English

Facilitator Materials in French

All Facilitator Materials can also be found here.

Module 1: Why Social Norms Matter - A Conceptual Foundation for Norms-Shifting Interventions

This module sets the conceptual foundation for social norms, discusses how norms influence attitudes and behaviors, and how norms are held in place by reference groups. Looking toward norms shifting interventions, this section offers an overview of theories on how norms influence behavior change. It also reviews the importance of articulating intermediate normative change effects to guide design, monitoring, and evaluation of norms-shifting interventions.

Module 1 Materials in English

Module 1 Materials in French

All Module 1 Materials can also be found here.

Module 2: Assessing Social Norms to Inform Program Design and Implementation Strategies

This module offers a deeper dive into the concepts of social norms, and provides opportunities to put these concepts into practice. Starting with a review of the value of conducting norms assessments–to understand, identify, and explore norms; following with approaches and resources to assess norms for programs; and finalizing with examples and participatory exercises to practice conducting norms assessments and rapid analysis to maximize the use of findings in program design, monitoring, and evaluations.

Module 2 Materials in English

Module 2 Materials in French

All Module 2 Materials can also be found here.

Module 3: Designing Norms-Shifting Interventions

This module focuses on designing norms shifting interventions. It takes the key concepts and learning from formative research to focus on norms program design, including approaches and issues to consider when designing norms-shifting interventions, strategies that norms-shifting interventions have used to shift norms, and reflections on the importance of ethical grounding to norms program design and implementation.

Module 3 Materials in English

Module 3 Materials in French

All Module 3 Materials can also be found here.

Module 4: Measuring Normative Shifts in Complex Environments

This module provides an overview of monitoring and evaluation. The monitoring section includes strategies to improve norms-shifting intervention (NSI) implementation, and also discusses project monitoring and rapid studies, which provide a basis for learning and adaptive management of NSIs during implementation. The rest of the module presents the evaluation of normative shifts, including a discussion on measurement, examining quantitative and qualitative approaches to measure normative change resulting from NSI project implementation.

Module 4 Materials in English

Module 4 Materials in French

All Module 4 Materials can also be found here.

Module 5: Scale-Up of Norms-Shifting Interventions

This module provides an overview of key concepts of planned scale-up using the ExpandNet framework as a guide, including defining the norms-shifting intervention (NSI) and its implementation supports, and considering additional elements to consider when planning scale-up. It then reviews some important technical, capacity, and ethical considerations for scaling up NSI.

Module 5 Materials in English

Module 5 Materials in French

All Module 5 Materials can also be found here.

Passages’ Social Norms Training Curriculum