The essence of EE seeks change: change in peo-ple’s behavior, change in people’s attitudes,change in people’s lives. In the Research Panel onStrategic Design and Impact Evaluation, chairedby Suruchi Sood (USA), EE practitioners andresearchers shared from their experience howthey evaluated the impact of their programs onpeople’s lives.

The CDC Sees Opportunity in AmericanSoaps

In the first presentation, Vicky Beck (USA)focused on American soap operas and how view-ers learn, and act on, health information receivedthrough that medium. Based on nearly 3,000surveys, her team at the Centers for DiseaseControl and Prevention found that about 20%of Americans consider themselves regular viewersof soaps, with the highest representation amonglow-income, low education, female, and minoritygroups. Interesting responses were made to thequestion: “Have you, in the past year, learnedanything about a disease or how to prevent it ona soap opera?” Nearly half (48%) of regular view-ers said “yes.”

Most interesting, said Beck, was that one-third of regular viewers took an action as a resultof what they saw. One-fourth mentioned thehealth information to someone they knew, and7% actually made a visit to a health care practi-tioner.

“Consistently in this group of regular view-ers,” said Beck, “we found higher rates for healthproblems, for health plan restrictions, and forlow assessment of health.” It’s obvious that this is

an audience in need of health information. But,she said, while their research found that thisaudience seeks out health information more, theyunderstand it less.

Our overall goal, said Beck, is to have moreaccurate information in the messages and to havemore health story lines. She explained that theCDC does this through a variety of ways, includ-ing developing and distributing resource materi-als, holding network briefings, offering healthexperts to speak at media events, and meetingwith producers and writers of the shows.Consulting is free, which is a pleasant surprisefor many in the entertainment business.

The CDC has also developed a soap operaaward, called the Sentinel for Health Awards.The awards will be given annually to soap operawriters and producers who incorporate into theirprogram an accurate story line on a criticalhealth issue. The winning program at the cere-mony in West Hollywood was ABC-TV’s OneLife to Live for a storyline on breast cancer.Other winning entries addressed adolescentHIV/AIDS, drunk driving, and disability.

As a Community Changes, So Might aNation: Radio Soaps in India

In the second presentation, Arvind Singhal(USA) spoke about community-level effects of aradio soap opera called Tinka Tinka Sukh (trans-lated as “happiness lies in small things”). Thiswas a radio soap opera, broadcast by All IndiaRadio in 1996 and 1997. It ran for one year,over 27 radio stations, for 104 episodes.Researchers logged 47 categories of issues,

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including community pride, equal treatment ofboys and girls, marital issues, empowerment ofwomen, educating women, and many other gen-der themes.

Singhal admitted that he stumbled upon thecommunity-level aspect of his research by acci-dent. He relatedhow that, whilethe soap operawas being broad-cast, All IndiaRadio receivedan unusual let-ter, written byan entire com-munity. Theletter, about 2feet square, wasvery colorfuland signed by184 people.“There wereeventhumbprintsof womenwho could notsign theirname,” henoted. Besides the intriguing concept of the let-ter, its contents were unusual. The letter noted:“We’ve been listening to the soap opera as acommunity. We do group listening. We love thisprogram. This program has changed the life ofour community and we as a community, basedon the messages that we have heard from thesoap opera, have decided that we will not give ortake dowry.”

Dowry was a message that had been empha-sized heavily in the soap. “Now, if you’re aresearcher and the program producer forwards

you a letter like this because you are involved ina research evaluation of the program,” saidSinghal, “you are intrigued! So we decided tovisit this village.” The village has about 6,000people, 60 radio sets, and 5 television sets.

“There are very many different methods thatwe used in our study ofthis radio soap opera,”said Singhal. Methodsincluded unstructuredinterviews, focusgroup interviews, par-ticipant observation,archival recordsearches, and localfolk form observa-tions.

They discov-ered that animportant “sparkplug” forchange in thiscommunitywas the villagetailor. Thetailor was anavid listener

of radio, and his shop was located in a high traf-fic area of the village, so people would naturallystop by his shop to socialize, and listen to theradio soap opera. The tailor was a driving forcebehind getting signatures on the community let-ter that eventually found its way to Singhal.

Other opinion leaders in the village encour-aged the creation of listening groups. Villagerscould go to these “listening clubs,” where vil-lagers would gather to listen, discuss the pro-gram, then create strategies for change in theircommunity. Singhal read a representative com-ment his team recorded from their study of the

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villagers: “We would all listen to the serial andwe would hold discussions afterwards. For exam-ple, when we listened in the afternoon, in the

evening when we returned home we would talkabout it with others. They would also say thatthey would not give dowry, and tell me that Iwould not have to give dowry. We would adviseeach other how we should counsel others not togive or take dowry. Now, after listening to TinkaTinka Sukh and after we took the vow, asexpressed in that letter, that we will not give ortake dowry, we have formed a group to enddowry in this village. In this way, our sisters anddaughters will not suffer.”

Another community-based initiative theynoted was how the village educated its girls. Thecommunity addressed this issue by seriously con-sidering why certain young boys and, in particu-lar, girls did not attend school. When they foundthat a primary factor was child-care (girls caringfor their younger siblings), the communitydecided to create two new cooperative child-carecenters. Before the community acted, the per-

centage of girls in school was 10% of the class-rooms. After the program was initiated, thatnumber jumped to 40%.

Singhal stressed that the findings in this onevillage could not be extrapolated to all of India.“But,” he noted, “these findings still provide us aunique view into the process of how EE pro-grams can spark changes, how opinion leadersact and mobilize efforts, and how a communitycomes to terms with social change.”

The Measure of Soul City: Multimedia,Mass Communication Programming

The third presenter was Sue Goldstein (SouthAfrica). Soul City is an extremely popular, multi-media mass communication program: from theirsurvey of 2,000 people, they calculated 14 mil-lion television viewers, 12 million radio listeners,and 10 million people reached through booklets.Among 16- to 24-year-olds, 79% had seen SoulCity in some form; among urban dwellers, 75%;and among rural dwellers, 60%.

Goldstein briefed the audience on SoulCity’s efforts in television, radio, print media,and special outreach programs (such as with tele-phone hotlines for female victims of domesticviolence, done in collaboration with NationalNetwork on Violence Against Women).

Goldstein shared preliminary findings fromtheir evaluations, which were aimed at investigat-ing the program’s impact on individuals, howthose impacted individuals interacted with theircommunities, and, finally, in a societal context.She described their multi-methodology strategy,which included studies in national qualitativeimpact assessment, cost outcome descriptions ofspecific programs, monitoring and analyzingmedia that resulted from Soul City program-

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“When big brother tells lit-tle brother to shape up with a stick

in his hand, theaudience tends

to tune out.It’s one thingto encode themessage, butyou don’tknow how

the audiencewill decode

it.”Arvind

Singhal

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ming, institutional and organizational impactstudies, and partnership studies, among others.

Goldstein reported that, generally, increasedexposure to Soul City programming positivelyimpacted an individual’s behavior change. Forexample, she highlighted the results from ahealth clinic in a rural area, which attributedtheir policy change from distributing condomsone day a week to distributing condoms everyday of the week directly to Soul City program-ming.

Changes do not come overnight, she cau-tioned. “I think the kind of pressures we’re underfrom funders is to say, ‘You did this in Soul Cityand the HIV rates went down.’ But the complex-

ities of behavior change are very often not recog-nized.” She encouraged participants to explain todecision makers that changes do not occurquickly and that, in fact, programs need to befunded consistently over many years’ time to seethe intended results.

Character Matters: Soap Behavior HelpsChange Real Life

Larry Kincaid (USA) presented the final talk: aresearch method to measure audience response tocharacters in an EE drama.

His group has been developing methods toevaluate the content of messages within EE pro-grams. “We’ve been developing cognitive imagemapping of characters, and their attributes, as anew way of evaluating campaigns.”

Kincaid described a different study conduct-ed in the Philippines. Their longitudinal studydesign followed the same men and women overthree points in time to determine if the image offamily planning methods could predict theiradoption. The survey questioned how people feltabout contraceptive methods—specifically, howhealthy, effective, moral, easy to use, and safethey thought a method was. The results showedthat “the attributes people associate with these

methods are very important for their adoptionof a particular method,” he noted.

In the Philippines, there is oppositionfrom the church to methods such as oralcontraceptives and IUD and an emphasis onthe use of rhythm. “We were worried about

the morality of the methods,” Kincaid said,“and although morality is important, it was not

as important on the average as whether methodsare healthy, safe, and easy to use.” Those whoseimage changed in a positive manner during thecampaign adopted a modern contraceptivemethod.

With such a data-driven picture of contra-ceptives in a country, said Kincaid, programmanagers would be able to provide the informa-tion people need to change their behavior.

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“We found that,although morality

is an importantissue in a person’s

decision to choosea family plan-ning method, itwas not asimportant as thehealth, safety,

and ease of useissues associated

with amethod.”

Larry Kincaid

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