QUICK LINKS
1.1.1 Identify animal welfare improvement priorities
1.1.2 Identify the target audience
1.1.3 Identify Desired Behaviours of Target Audience to Improve Animal Welfare
1.1.4 Identify target behaviours feasible for the project to address
1.1.1 Identify animal welfare improvement priorities
Before implementing the SOC approach, first identify the priorities of the outreach or awareness-raising campaign in terms of improving animals’ welfare, and explore the root causes underpinning identified issues, including any identified resource access or availability issues. You may already have an issue of importance in mind based on your initial scoping process or review of existing data e.g. animal disease/disease prevention, or from working with communities already. If you are not yet familiar with the welfare conditions of the animals, consider conducting a preliminary assessment of animal welfare using methods and tools you feel appropriate to your projects’ identification of animal welfare needs. Alternatively, consider using community collected data obtained through participatory tools such as the Animal welfare transect walk (T22) if available or feasible to collect. Social surveys can also be used to identify community perceived animal welfare improvement priorities, although these may not reflect animals’ welfare needs and rather the issues communities are most concerned or impacted by.
Next, explore the root causes of these animal welfare issues with focus groups and/or representative key informants to better understand the broader context in which they occur. Root cause analysis uncovers the deeper underlying causes of these welfare issues, which can help you refine the list of priority welfare issues to those which would may be most effectively addressed through a societal outreach or awareness raising campaign project (e.g. issues caused by low awareness, knowledge, motivation, social values/beliefs etc.). Alternatively, if you find your SOC project unlikely to be effective in addressing the real root causes of an issue, you may wish to reconsider whether it is ethical and effective to continue with the project without working with communities to find solution to other root causes.
Consider categorizing the welfare issues in terms of the five domains of animal welfare and alternative desired welfare states. Use Pairwise ranking (T8) or Matrix ranking and scoring (T9) to aid in the prioritization of the issues, and Problem Animal (T25) or Animal Welfare Cause and Effect Analysis (T26) to support root cause analysis. Whenever feasible, select a target issue which reflect the priority welfare issues of the communities as this can improve their interest and motivation on working to address them. Then, once identified and prioritized, you can proceed to the next step.
During these initial discussions, listen for change talk to gauge the stage of change of individuals from different groups related to any animal welfare issues/improvements discussed. Understanding where people are in the stages of change can give insight on how best to frame communications as you develop your outreach messaging in later steps. Refer to the following facilitator resources for further guidance: 3. Guidance on Listening for Change Talk, 6. Techniques for Supporting Progress through the Stages of Change. While insights gained from a representative few are not necessarily accurate representations of the diversity of people and perspectives within a target audience, they provide vital insights to different perspectives and ensure projects are not solely based on assumptions and unlikely to support desired change.
To support the documentation of key findings and insights, consider using or adapting the Project action tracker template provided in facilitator resources.
1.1.2 Identify the target audience
Once you have a clear idea of the project’s animal welfare improvement priorities, you next need to identify the target audience or audiences within the community who can affect change in the welfare issues identified. Seek to understand the demographics, and roles and responsibilities of actors influencing observed welfare issues. When directly meeting with communities is not feasible due size or scale of reach, consider conducting focus group discussions (FGDs) or key informant interviews (KIIs) with representative and knowledgeable community stakeholders, including local veterinary and animal health service and resource providers, and anyone else who influences animal welfare, directly or indirectly.
Engage in discussions to identify who can affect desired changes in each of the welfare issues identified. Rainbow diagrams (refer to Figure 51) are useful tool for visualizing stakeholders and identifying potential allies, targets, detractors, and those who may be least or most impacted by the project. Consider using a diagram like the one illustrated in Figure 51 below, with key informants from animal owning communities. Place cards representing the stakeholders most affected by the issue, or who have the strongest influence on it, on the inner segments. This helps us to explore, notice and try to address any undesired impacts/unintended results we might face at a later stage. It might also help us to identify potential backlashes, resistance or safeguarding issues that we might need to be aware of.
You can also change the headings to ‘allies’, neutral parties’, ‘opponents’ and so on. Cards representing those who are the least affected, or have the least influence, are placed on the outer segments. You can use differently coloured cards for different types of stakeholders or vary the size of the cards. This process can be useful to decide on your targets for the outreach or awareness campaign process and can also aide in identifying key community members or stakeholders who would be useful in delivering outreach messaging [75].
Figure 51: Rainbow Diagram of Stakeholders Affecting/Affected by Desired Change
If time and resources permit, consider using the following participatory tools to generate deeper insights on influential stakeholders, and daily activities and roles and responsibilities of different community members related to their animals, as these can also be helpful to understanding who to target or involve in your project: Venn diagram (T3), Daily Activity Schedule (T4), Gender Roles and Responsibilities (T5).
Through these discussions, identify the target actors whose behaviour or practices are most likely to be influencing each of the identified welfare issues. Remember to document key findings and insights gained through discussions and activities to identify target actors and consider using or adapting the 20. Project action tracker template provided in facilitator resources.
1.1.3 Identify Desired Behaviours of Target Audience to Improve Animal Welfare
Once you understand the potential target actors responsible for influencing animal welfare, the next step is to specify the desired behaviours of target actors that will bring about animal welfare improvements for each of the priority animal welfare issues identified.
If reliable information already exists on the impact of behaviours on animal welfare – perhaps from previous interventions undertaken by your organization or from existing good quality literature, then this can be used to identify potential behaviours to address for further discussion with focus groups and key informants in this part of the process.
Consulting with key informants and other knowledgeable representatives from the target audience/actors through FGDs or Key informant interviews (KII) is recommended to assist in identifying target behaviours that can be promoted to address identified welfare issues. Consider inviting animal welfare experts to participate in these discussions as well to advise on proposed behaviours’ potential effectiveness in improving animal welfare issues or potential risks to animals. Begin by discussing the priority welfare issues and current practices and gaps in animal welfare practices of target actors and identify the alternative practices/behaviours that could be adopted by target actors to address the animal welfare.
If you have not already done so, consider categorizing the welfare issues in terms of the five domains of animal welfare and alternative desired welfare states, and then brainstorm with representatives of the target audience desired practices/behaviours that could be adopted to address. Consider populating creating your framework like the Example of Five Domains of Animal Welfare for Donkeys Linked with Human Behaviours provided in the facilitator resources. Doing this can both aid you in identifying potential target behaviours that are locally appropriate and more likely to be adopted, as well help generate a list of all the potential alternative actions which could be promoted to achieve the desired animal welfare improvement. This may be helpful to revisit if you find the barriers to the adoption of target behaviours to be too great and need to reconsider which target behaviours the project should focus on.
The goal is to define a list of potential target behaviours which could be promoted by the outreach programme or campaign to improve the welfare issues. For each of the priority target actors, identify two behaviours simultaneously: 1) the desired behaviour and 2) the problem behaviour. It is important to think about and list relevant behaviours that need to be performed by the target community as well as those of existing competing problem behaviours; both are needed to frame messages and design interventions. Using FGD, KII or administering surveys can help to identify the reasons actors do or do not perform desired or problem behaviour.
For example, if we take the example of handling animals in the context of behaviours to be encouraged and discouraged, a common area of concern is aggressive, punishment-based handling techniques. These techniques use aversive equipment such as whips and sticks to hit an animal with the aim of getting them to move and comply with what the person wants. The behaviours associated with whipping behaviour might include picking the whip up to use, carrying the whip, or waving the whip at the animal to evoke a fear response that makes the animal move, this chain of behaviours may then lead to the behaviour of whipping itself if the animal does not react as the person wishes. Whipping may be done in different ways and thus is includes different behaviours – for example, someone may hit the animal once with a short sharp tap or use their whole body to gain momentum and force with the whip, some may repeatedly whip several times, people might hit the animal on different parts of their body (e.g. head, side, hindquarters). It is important to understand and breakdown the behaviour to be discouraged to understand what is needed regarding the behaviour to be encouraged. For example, considering the behaviours that may precede whipping and hitting (such as picking the whip up to use), this could be replaced with picking up reward-based equipment such as food to encourage the animal to act in the desired way rather than whipping. This would build the foundations for a change in handling behaviour. We might want to replace the whipping behaviour with welfare promoting behaviours, for example using the voice, body language including positioning, or guiding tools that reduce the need for direct contact with the animal. The more we can understand and breakdown both the behaviours to be discouraged and the behaviours to be encouraged, the greater insight we must feed into our intervention approach.
In addition, it is important to remember that for behaviour change to be possible, behaviours you identify need to be as specific as possible (non-divisible) and reflect the end-state behaviour. Non-divisible behaviours refer to actions that cannot be divided further, whereas end-state refers to the behaviours that produce the desired outcome. A simple way to determine whether a behaviour is end-state is to ask, “Will engaging in this behaviour produce the intended animal welfare improvement?” If communities need to engage in another behaviour before the desired welfare improvement is achieved, the behaviour you have identified is not an end-state behaviour [31]. It is likely that there will be a chain of behaviours that need to occur for the end-state behaviour to result in the animal welfare improvement.
ATTENTION! It can be useful to write a behaviour change statement to clarify the desired behaviour. A behavioural statement outlines a population (e.g. people who live in a certain community or who own horses for transport), motivation (e.g. who want their horses to be healthy), set of limitations (e.g. as long as they have the knowledge and equipment), desired behaviour (e.g. will provide water for their horses when they are tied up during the day), and a way to measure it (e.g. to be measured by observations during village walks regarding how many horses have access to water during the day).
Throughout these discussions with community members, listen for change talk to gauge different actors’ stages of change (pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance, or relapse) about the animal welfare issues prioritized for change, documenting any insights. See the facilitator resources 3. Guidance on listening for change talk and consider using the Project Action Tracker to document key findings.
1.1.4 Identify target behaviours feasible for the project to address
Once you have identified a list of potential behaviours to bring about desired welfare improvements, the next step is to select those which are felt to be feasible for the project to address as potential targets. It is important to narrow the potential targets to 1-3 behaviours as this will help you focus your efforts to understand the target audience and their behaviours in the next steps, so it is manageable.
Use FGDs or Key informant interviews (KII) with members of the target audience and other knowledgeable community stakeholders including opinion leaders or animal welfare experts to gauge public opinion and inform the prioritization of desirable behaviours to target. They will have insider knowledge about the likelihood behaviours may be adopted and potential barriers that might influence adoption of new desired targeted behaviour and abandoning the conflicting behaviour. The inclusion of knowledgeable community leaders and influencers at this stage can help generate buy-in or desired outcomes which they may support disseminating communications about and aid the development of trust between the project and the target audience.
To prioritize potential desirable behaviours or actions for the project to focus on promoting, consider using the following criteria adapted from the Behaviour Change Wheel: A Guide to Designing Interventions to guide your discussions and prioritization of behaviour change targets [21].
- How much of an impact adopting the behaviour would have on improving the overall welfare state of the animal in terms of the five domains.
This can be done by assessing the impact of these behaviours on animal welfare, if reliable information already exists on this – perhaps from previous interventions undertaken by your organization or from existing good quality literature. In the absence of information then use individuals with expertise in animal welfare to assist with rating the behaviour in a five- point scale of ‘0’ (no impact) to ‘5’ (most impact), avoiding group rankings and averaging out the individual’s results. When looking at more than one impact use the information gathered to guide towards the change of behaviours, which will show the greatest impact overall.
- How likely it is that the target behaviour (or group of behaviours) will have positive or negative impact on other related behaviours. Creating a diagram/relationship web to map and visualise the interactions between different behaviours/actors can help you identify the higher priority behaviours, which are the root cause of other behaviours.
- How likely it is the target behaviour can be changed and adopted by this community. When considering the likelihood of change being achieved, think about the barriers and motivators to change in terms of capability, opportunity, and motivation to change of those who perform the behaviour). In general, higher/broader level outreach activities should focus more on those behaviours for which knowledge, social opportunity and motivation are issues rather than focussing resources on skills building unless modelling or visuals can be provided. This is due to the time and resource needed to develop skills. It is important to note that this is less effective, and retention will be low if materials are only read or watched and not practiced. Refer to the box below for suggested alternative methods for assessing likelihood of target audiences adopting target behaviours.
- Determine participation in the behaviour that already exists within your community – how well adopted is this behaviour already? If some members of the community are already performing the behaviours it shows that it could potentially be adopted on a wider scale within the community and that cultural or societal norms may not prove to be a barrier. These early adopters could be key to supporting your project, disseminating messaging, and creating sustainable behaviour change. Refer to the box below for alternative suggested methods for assessing existing levels of participation in target behaviours.
- How easy it will be to measure the behaviour. You will need to identify the behaviour you want to measure, then decide what it is you want to measure – will it be frequency or rate of adoption, how well the behaviour is performed or some other value of measurement?
The Behaviour Change/COM-B Diagnosis Community Question Guide provided within the facilitator resources may be useful to supporting this process.
Alternative Methods for Assessing Target Behaviours’ Likelihood of Adoption and Extent of Current Practice
You may wish to consider using one or more of the following methods to help gather insights on the likelihood desired target behaviours’ will be adopted by target audience, and the extent to which behaviours may already be practiced.
Alternatively, you may wish to incorporate these as part of your audience insight assessment in the following steps (refer to section 1.3):
- Consider adapting one or both of the following participatory tools for use in focus group discussions with key target audience demographics:
a. Animal Welfare Practice Gap Analysis (T21): can aid in identifying extent to which welfare promoting practices are already being practiced and generate understanding of gaps and related barriers to their which can help identify behaviours to target for change.
b. Three Pile sorting (T23): can aid in exploring target audiences understanding and perspectives on different desired behaviours proposed to improve animal welfare issues. - Spending time directly observing behaviour is always recommended if feasible to evaluate whether some people within the community are already performing the target behaviours, or even parts of the target behaviour, as most actions are comprised of numerous smaller actions. In addition, observe the behaviour you aim to dissuade people using – in all instances try to observe discreetly to avoid influencing the behaviour of the person being observed (ensuring that such observation is done in an ethically appropriate manner).
- Consider conducting a survey amongst a representative sample from the target audience to assess -
a. their likelihood of adopting potential desired behaviours
b. the extent and frequency people already engage in the target behaviour
Using a scale of ‘0’ (no likelihood) to ‘4’ (very likely) ask the community members to rate very specific questions over a range of options, such as:
• How likely are you to worm your animal if you must work out how to do it yourself and then purchase the wormer to do it?
• How likely are you to worm your animal if you are given the wormer but with no help in how to administer it?
• How likely are you to worm your animal if you are helped to source the wormer and are shown how to give it to your animal and then if you practice how to administer it?
Although the responses you receive may be inflated and probably slightly inaccurate, if you compare the relative rates with each different target behaviour, you will be able to find the behaviour perceived as most likely to be adopted, and you can then test this perception to see if it holds true. This process will enable you to reduce the number of target behaviours to those that are most likely to be adopted.
- Look at past programmes targeting the behaviours may wish to prioritize to further evaluate which behaviours may have the most chance of success.
Key points to evaluate in past programmes:
• How effective were the activities in encouraging behaviour change, how many people adopted the behaviour change and was this sustained over time?
• What was the approach used?
• Where was the community – context is extremely important here. If the community was very different, such as a different country or climate, there will be other pressures that would affect the success of a programme such as social norms, culture, access to resources, differences in husbandry.
• Costs of delivery of the programme - Ideally you will be able to evaluate a few different programmes that will give you a good overview of programmes that have successfully targeted behaviour change in the areas you have identified and will give you some idea of which approaches may be most appropriate for your community.
Through this process, you may find you do not have extensive information informing all the criteria for prioritizing behaviours and it is ok to rely on the best available information and insights from key informants from the target audience to help make a preliminary determination of priority behaviour change targets at this stage. Document any information gaps identified through this process, as you’ll want to further explore this during the audience research step which follows. In addition, record any other key findings and insights related to the target audience and their barriers and motivators to change which may emerge from discussions or activities conducted during this step. Consider using or adapting the 20. Project action tracker template provided in facilitator resources to support your documentation of findings and any follow-up actions that need to be taken.
It is important to understand and be sensitive to the context within which you are working and decide on behaviours accordingly. You may find it helpful to adapt the Matrix ranking and scoring (T9) tool using the criteria outlined above to aide your prioritization of target behaviours.
Tools and resources helpful to supporting this step include:
PLA Tools
Pair wise ranking (T8)
Matrix ranking and scoring (T9)
Problem animal (T25)
Animal welfare cause and effect analysis (T26)
Venn diagram (T3)
Daily activity schedule (T4)
Gender roles and responsibilities (T5)
Animal welfare practice gap analysis (T21)
Three pile sorting (T23)
Animal welfare transect walk (T22)
Facilitator Resources
11. Behaviour Change/COM-B Diagnosis Community Question Guide
3. Guidance on Listening for Change Talk
9. Example of Five Domains of Animal Welfare for Donkeys Linked with Human Behaviours
6. Techniques for Supporting Progress Through the Stages of Change
20. Project Action Tracker
