Social Norms Exploration Tool (SNET)

"With a solid understanding of existing social norms in a specific community, who maintains (or is perceived to maintain) these norms, and how they relate to behaviors, practitioners can design more relevant and effective programs; and improve monitoring and evaluation efforts, contributing to best practices."

Many social and behaviour change (SBC) programmes are looking to address social norms and other factors upholding harmful behaviours and limiting sustained programme impact. The Social Norms Exploration Tool (SNET) is a participatory learning and action tool that guides a social norms exploration. It was developed by the Passages Project at the Institute for Reproductive Health (IRH) of Georgetown University, in partnership with members of the Learning Collaborative to Advance Normative Change, with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

A social norms exploration is a team-based, qualitative process to gather information at the community level and quickly develop a preliminary understanding of the social norms operating in programme communities that are influencing how people act or behave from a programme perspective. The SNET is ideally implemented before a programme, to inform norm-shifting strategies to reach programme objectives. Such an exploration can also be applied mid-programme to make course corrections or bring in more norms-aware programming.

The SNET provides step-by-step exercises and templates and offers guidance to interpret findings to inform intervention design and guide monitoring and evaluation. It is divided into 5 phases:

1. "PLAN & PREPARE": Reflect on norms that may influence behavioural outcomes of interest, define the exploration objectives, and choose and prepare participatory exercises.
2. "IDENTIFY REFERENCE GROUPS": Use participatory exercises with project participants to identify reference groups (whom people seek advice from and who influences their behaviours) and conduct rapid analysis.
3. "EXPLORE SOCIAL NORMS": Use participatory exercises with project participants and reference group members about factors influencing specific behaviours, unpacking norms and their relative influence.
4. "ANALYZE FINDINGS": Conduct participatory analysis to compare, contrast, and identify themes and develop a findings brief.
5. "APPLY FINDINGS": Apply findings to design or refine programmes for action, focusing on developing specific strategies to address the most important norms and engage reference groups.

Sprinkled throughout the guide are labeled boxes (different colours per section): "CASE STUDY" boxes share examples from programmes that may offer additional insight; "TIP" boxes provide reminders of information to keep in mind during a social norms exploration. Annexes provide tools such as: an illustrative social norms exploration (fieldwork) plan, sample interview guide and recording forms, rapid analysis template, sample vignette, and user feedback form. Additional readings on social norms and other relevant topics to the SNET are found at the end of the document.

Since 2016, IRH and partners from the Passages project (Tearfund, Save the Children) have piloted, revised, and re-piloted the SNET with norms-shifting interventions in over 15 settings, including in the Democratic Republic of Congo. IRH offers distance and in-country technical assistance to organisations and projects that wish to use SNET. The experiences and learnings from the field-testing of this version of the SNET will inform any final revisions for dissemination in 2021.