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T26 Animal Welfare Cause and Effect Analysis

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T26: Animal Welfare Cause and Effect Analysis

The animal welfare cause and effect analysis is sometimes called a problem tree, in which causes are depicted as roots of the tree and effects as branches. This adapted version of the tool provides a visual representation of the relationship between the causes of specific priority animal welfare issues, and the effects of the issues on both people and animals [48]. This tool has proven to be one of the most important and effective participatory tools in this toolkit, as the improved understanding and awareness that results from discussions and outputs of this activity have effectively motivated participants to take action to prevent animal welfare issues, as well as respond to them when they do occur. In particular, the effect analysis portion of this tool can be a key motivator of behaviour change. Consider conducting a pairwise ranking (T8) or matrix ranking and scoring (T9) prior to this one to identify the priority welfare issues.

Tool purpose:Time needed:
• To identify and promote participant understanding of the root causes of a specific priority animal welfare issue and their implications for humans and animals.
• To generate participants’ motivation to take action or change their behaviour, either collectively or individually, to prevent or respond to animal welfare issues
• To identify root causes of animal welfare issues and potential implications on the livelihoods and well-being of animal-owning households.
1.5 - 2 hours
Materials needed:
Cards, pens, markers, coloured powder, chalk, sticks, tree leaves, coloured cards or other locally available materials

Keyword Search Tags

Project Phase:
Planning Phase, Implementation Phase

Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach, Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach

Behavioural Drivers (COM-B):
Behaviour Change Diagnosis and Planning, Capability, Motivation

Stages of Behaviour Change:
Contemplation Stage,  Preparation Stage

Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools, Needs Assessment, Gender Analysis

Specific Topics: Animal Welfare, Feelings, and Needs; Livelihoods; Compassion / Empathy

Animal welfare cause and effect analysis (or problem tree)

The animal welfare cause and effect analysis is used to analyze an animal welfare issue or problem by identifying the complex contributing factors and any relationships between the factors, as well as their effects on animal-owning households and animals alike. In the context of working animals, this tool has been used to help identify the causes of priority welfare problems such as wounds and overloading, and to discuss the effects of these welfare issues on animals and the people who depend on them. For example, discussing the causes of wounds on specific parts of a working animal’s body may highlight causal factors such as the size and structure a harness or saddle, or the design of a cart or carriage. Effects on the animal could include pain, weight loss and reduced working capacity. Effects of the animal’s wounds on the owner could include less income (from reduced work and increased expenditure on treatment) or lower status in the community.

T26a Animal Welfare Cause and Effect Analysis diagram for an Animal-Owning Community

T26a Animal Welfare Cause and Effect Analysis diagram for an Animal-Owning Community

The above animal welfare cause and effect analysis was produced by a group of working animal owners in a rural community. They were particularly concerned about reducing and preventing wounds on their animals’ backs. Four major causes were initially identified: whipping by users, beating by children, bad road conditions and improper harness fitting. These causes were then continuously analysed to better understand why they were happening, until the underlying root causes were identified. The effects of back wounds on the animals were then discussed and identified as decreased energy, low appetite, pain and increased risk of infection. The resulting effects on the household were decreased income, increased expenditure on treatment and always feeling stressed and worried about where money would come from and whether the animal would recover.

This activity motivated the group to take action on the root causes that were within their influence.

This included:

  • Petitioning the local government for road repairs between nearby communities and major transport routes
  • Promoting more humane handling amongst members of their household to prevent wounds from whipping and beating
  • Making their own welfare-friendly harnesses from recycled materials

Animal Welfare Cause & Effect Analysis
Step 1Ask participants to identify the animal welfare issues they feel are a priority and select one issue to explore in depth with this exercise. Consider referring to animal welfare issues and priorities previously identified using T25 Problem Animal, T8 Pairwise Ranking or T9 Matrix Ranking and Scoring, if available. Make sure that the issue is not broad, such as ‘wounds’ generally.
Step 2Have the community helper draw a circle on the ground or on a large piece of paper and ask him/her to draw or write the priority welfare issue in the middle of the circle using a symbol, picture, or word.
Step 3Begin the discussion by asking the group what they perceive to be the major factors that cause this problem. As main causes are identified, each cause is added below the priority issue, using symbols, pictures, or words, and connected to the problem with arrows.
Step 4Once all initial causal factors have been identified, start with one causal factor, and have participants identify the sub-causal factors by asking them why that causal factor happens? Show this sub-cause below the major cause it is associated with, connecting it with an arrow (see Figure T26). Continue asking why each sub-cause happens and continue adding sub-causes - spreading out like the roots of tree - until the group reaches a stage where no further sub-causes can be found. As a rule, these probing using “why” questions may need to be asked 3-5 times per cause, before the root cause is finally identified.

Please note: It is common for participants to discuss, and debate causes. These discussions often create shared learning opportunities, whereby participants learn from one another as they discuss and seek agreement on the true causal factors. As a facilitator, you should allow and encourage this discussion without inserting your ideas. However, you may need to ask probing questions or take the time to teach participants about the real causal factors if they get stuck or their lack of understanding prevents them from identifying true root causes. You may also need to intervene if they struggle to resolve their differences in beliefs themselves.
Step 5Once all the root causes of the welfare issue have been identified, facilitate the same process to analyse the effects of the welfare issue on the animal and the animal-owning household. Start by having the helper add two circles above the welfare issue: one representing the animal and the other representing the animal-owning household.
Step 6Ask participants to identify the effect of the welfare problem on the animal. As effects on the animal are identified, linkages to the animal-owning household will naturally emerge and the discussion can quickly turn to effects on the household.

Please note: The facilitator should allow the discussion to flow naturally, ensuring full exploration of effects on the animal AND household. It is common for participants to identify only a few main effects on the animal, especially in contexts where animals are not viewed as sentient beings. Here, the facilitator’s role is to ask probing questions to promote discussion around the animal’s feelings and experience of the welfare issue. It may be helpful to frame questions in terms of, “If you had this issue, how would you feel?”

Please note: When discussing the effects on the animal-owning household, encourage participants to consider potential effects on all household members, including men, women, and children. Ask: do the identified household effects effect all household members equally? Make sure effects on different household members are accounted for on the diagram.
Step 7When the diagram is complete, ask participants to reflect on what they have discussed and mapped. Some discussion questions may include:
Support the community to identify possible solutions if needed, either in this session or in a follow up session as time and resources permit.
Step 8Once complete, take a photo or record the outputs on a piece of paper. Ensure that the community has a copy for their records and facilitator has a copy for future reference or planning.

Finally, have the community record any root causes and activities to address the causes in the community action plan. Make sure to include any resources/materials needed to achieve this, including who will monitor it and a realistic timeline. Record the actions, activities, and proposed linkages into your project action tracker, and support the community by linking them to any necessary stakeholders.

Facilitation Notes

  • The facilitator should have a good knowledge of animal welfare and be able to recommend solutions to address issues, including community-based collective action ideas. Participants may ask for advice on actions to address root causes.
  • Decide the group dynamics ahead of time and whether it would be best carried out with men and women (or other subgroups) separately or in a mixed group. This will depend on your rapport with the community, culture and local gender dynamics. This is important when their roles and responsibilities related to animals differ, and/or they use/depend on animals differently, as their perceptions and concerns may differ.
    • If conducted separately between men and women, consider bringing the two groups back together at the end of the activity to review the results of each chart and resolve any discrepancies if time allows and culturally appropriate.
    • If it is not appropriate to conduct this activity with men and women together in the local context, or if it could prohibit participation and freedom of discussion, consider conducting this activity separately.
  • This exercise can take considerable time, so discuss this in advance with the group and agree a suitable time to set aside for doing it.
  • Avoid using your own examples; encourage everyone to express their individual views.
  • This exercise requires patience from the facilitator in order for deepest causal factors to emerge from the discussion. Allow time for participants to discuss their experiences.

Next Steps

  • The cause and effect analysis is useful for action planning, especially when combined with:
  • If the group is struggling to understand that animals have feelings and identify them as sentient beings, consider conducting the T19 Animal feeling analysis again.
  • If monitoring identifies that the solutions to root causes are unable to be adopted or behaviours go unchanged, conduct a T15 Cost benefit analysis to explore the cost of continuing negative behaviours or practices and benefits of positive behaviour change.
  • Follow up with resource or service providers needed to help the group carry out their activities. Revisit the activities in the next meeting to monitor progress and if further support is required.
  • Results may also be useful to informing inform project planning and/or identify potential for partnerships to support:
    • Identification of community capacity building support to address the root causes of priority animal welfare issues
    • Addressing priority root causes which may be external to communities’ e.g. changes in policy
    • Identification of potential livelihood or human wellbeing indicators which could be used in monitoring to assess changes in people’s lives as a result of actions taken to improve animal welfare.

Link to References Cited


Societal Outreach and Campaigns (SOC) Approach Overview

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“Societal Outreach and Campaigns” (SOC)
roadmap of societal outreach and campaigns
The Stages of Change

Societal Outreach and Campaigns” (SOC) is the broad umbrella term used to refer to this approach in recognition of the variety of education efforts and communication tactics that may be used to engage large target audiences to raise awareness and support achievement of behaviour change outcomes.

While not as empowering as working directly and more intensively with communities as other approaches such as the Community Engagement or Community Development Approach, awareness-raising approaches and outreach campaigns can provide a cost-effective method for reaching broad numbers of people to support the improvement of animal welfare when:

  • animal-owning community members and their animals are too geographically scattered to regularly meet or reach (e.g. in rural areas)
  • the population is too large to work with everyone at the same time (e.g. in urban areas)

The SOC approach is best suited to reaching broad sectors of society to support behavioural change through:

  • Raising awareness of issues
  • Improving knowledge or capabilities, and/or
  • Influencing social norms and values e.g. to promote compassion for animals and reduce the harmful animal husbandry and management practices, or raising awareness of animals’ value and role in people’s lives amongst society at large in contexts where animal welfare problems are associated with society’s low perceived status or value of animals as sentient beings.
  • Providing reminders or encouragement to support the action and maintenance of desired behaviours.

This approach can be undertaken concurrently in support of broader behaviour change initiatives, such as those using the Community Engagement or Community Development approach, to aide development of necessary preconditions for behaviour change related to awareness, knowledge, skills, or the creation of social norms. Use this guide to support you in either all or some stages of the SOC approach, for instance, if just raising general awareness about animal welfare, then concentrating efforts on gaining audience insight to ensure your messaging is framed effectively would be your focus, but it would be unnecessary to undertake further participatory activities as you would not need to identify target behaviours.

Although the SOC approach can be effective in changing knowledge, awareness, and social values, it is often insufficient for delivering sustainable change in behaviours. This is because increasing individuals’ knowledge, skills, and awareness or changing social values are often only part of what is needed to change a person’s behaviour towards their animals. However, the SOC approach’s broad focus on both reach and awareness raising may be particularly useful in contexts where the risks to animal welfare are relatively low and more intensive animal welfare improvement efforts are not necessary.

Using the SOC approach can be an important element in assisting people to move through the stages of change. It is particularly useful in supporting people to progress through the pre-contemplation, contemplation, and preparation stages of change, where awareness of an issue needs to be developed, which is supported by knowledge, and which in turn can generate motivation to act.

IMPORTANT
When implementing any strategy to change behaviour ensure to:
• investigate actual reasons particular behaviours are performed, and the barriers to performing target behaviours
• research and keep an open mind, and
• avoid the use of your own or others’ theories and assumptions about why existing behaviours are performed, and the barriers to the adoption of desired behaviours.

Core principles that should guide implementation of this approach include:

  1. Respect for all those involved: respect the autonomy and self-determination of participants, and protect those who lack autonomy, are vulnerable or marginalised.
  2. Compassion and empathy: safeguard the welfare of all involved, risks must be minimised, benefits must outweigh any risks.
  3. Integrity: fair distribution of benefits and burdens to ensure all those involved are treated fairly and that no groups or individuals are discriminated against during the SOC process [75]

In addition, refer to the section on Essential Ethical Considerations for Working with Communities for guidance on working ethically with communities on animal welfare improvement projects.

A summary overview of the entire SOC approach contained within this resource is mapped in the figure below, including each phase and its associated steps. Although the diagram shows a simple summary different contexts and communities will progress through these phases at different rates, and timelines indicated are only rough estimates and not prescriptive. Arrows highlight that the process is non-linear, and you may find you have to revisit previous phases as the project develops.

Figure 49: Overview of Societal Outreach and Campaigns (SOC) Approach

Figure 49: Overview of Societal Outreach and Campaigns (SOC) Approach

The diagram below illustrates the general progression through stages of change in the different phases of the SOC approach. As change is a process, community members can progress or relapse through the stages of change at any time during the project. As such, it is recommended that facilitators pay careful attention to where individuals are in their change process and adapt as needed to support people’s continued progress through the stages of change. Refer to the Human Behaviour Change Learning Module Part 3 for an introduction to the stages of change.

Figure 50: The Stages of Change Linked with the Phases of the Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach (SOC)

Figure 50: The Stages of Change Linked with the Phases of the Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach (SOC)


Follow the steps outlined in this approach and ensure animal owning communities are consulted, involved and/or collaborate in the design, planning, and/or implementation of the outreach and campaign activities undertaken in this approach. Through this approach, important discussions can be initiated, understanding of issues and the consequences for animal welfare, and the associated desired behaviours and practices; perceptions and assumptions challenged or changed, and harmony created between welfare friendly practices and people’s values and norms. As a result, this approach can be effective in increasing capability and motivation for improving animal welfare.

Ensure you read and consider the content in Essential ethical considerations for working with communities and 1. Gender mainstreaming checklist throughout all phases of the project.

Link to References Cited


Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach Recommended Core Competencies, Readings and External Resources

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Recommended Core Competencies for Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach
Recommended Readings and External Resources

Recommended Core Competencies for Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach

  1. Excellent communication skills:
    • Effective communication skills appropriate for the chosen channel of communication
    • Charismatic/engaging public speaker (for individuals delivering outreach messages publicly)
    • Expertise in effective message framing
  1. Gender Mainstreaming: Understanding of gender mainstreaming to promote gender equality, as well as intersectionality and implications for vulnerable groups and planning and implementing projects.
  2. Understanding of COM-B and stages of change model and appropriate strategies of engagement at each stage.
  3. Animal Welfare: good understanding of animal welfare in terms of the five domains of animal welfare and their human behaviour equivalents.
  4. Empathy and compassion: capacity to see things from other’s people’s perspective, be understanding and consider their situation, and read the community’s feelings, cultural norms and adjust as needed to suit situation.
  5. Event organization: experienced and effective planning and organizer of community events and activities.

The following C4A tools and resources may be useful to supporting capacity building related to these core competencies:

Recommended Readings and External Resources

Recommended readings and external resources that support this approach and development of recommended core competencies are provided below.

C4A RECOMMENDED READINGS

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

GENDER MAINSTREAMING AND INTERSECTIONALITY

BEHAVIOUR CHANGE

OUTREACH COMMUNICATION SKILLS AND MESSAGING

OTHER


1.1 Identify Priorities for Change

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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

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].

  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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):

  1. 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.
  2. 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).
  3. 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.

  1. 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.

Link to References Cited


1.2 Research the Target Audience and Their Behaviour

QUICK LINKS
1.2.1 Assess target audience’s behaviours and potential barriers and benefits to adoption of desired changes
1.2.2 Understand the lives of the target audience and context of the behaviours targeted for change
Tools and resources helpful to supporting this step

1.2.1 Assess target audience’s behaviours and potential barriers and benefits to adoption of desired changes

Now that you have identified the priority animal welfare issue(s) and target actors and have an idea of desired behaviours you are interested in promoting, it is essential to better understand your target audience(s) and the context of their behaviours before planning your outreach strategy.

It is extremely important throughout this process to override your own or others’ theories about people’s behaviour and avoid bias by retaining an open mind and allow the barriers and benefits to become apparent as you investigate with your community members. Remember every context and situation is different. This stage may will increase the likelihood of a successful campaign if adequate time and care is taken [21].

When collecting information to understand the target audience and their barriers and benefits to the adoption of desired behaviour(s), it is important to consider the following:

  • Seek insights from as many relevant sources and social groups within the target audience as possible, as the most accurate understanding is gained through the inclusion of multiple perspectives [21]. For example, different sectors of the animal owning community, such as men and women and other vulnerable groups can face unique challenges and barriers to change and have different opportunities available to them. Your understanding of intersectionality within the community context will be helpful to ensuring you create opportunities for different voices and their experiences to be considered in the identification of barriers and motivators to the adoption of the desired behaviours.
  • Consider using volunteer groups willing to participate in identifying issues, providing information, and sharing their stories and views on what the barriers are for them and others. This could be radio listeners groups, or groups established for different reasons or by different organizations so that they become the sounding board to shape the outreach and campaign messaging and modes of delivery in the long run.
  • Use a variety of methods and sources to collect this information to ensure that you can be confident in your results [21]. Methods used may employ participatory approaches, where appropriate, such as when conducting audience research, and the PLA tools used will be dependent on the time and resources at your disposal. These may include:

If you feel FGDs would be too daunting for some communities, or you feel the target audience might speak more freely individually, consider house-to-house surveys or semi-structured interviews.

Use results from participatory activities (if undertaken) and your observations throughout the initiation phase to provide useful insights for understanding the context of behaviours and the target audience during this step, including:

  • The causal factors identified during root cause analysis of welfare issues
  • Priority motivations/concerns both in their lives and in terms of their animals.
  • General level of awareness of animal welfare issues
  • Existing animal care, management and/or use practices associated with the animal welfare issues
  • Gender roles and responsibilities generally as well as in relation to animal care and management.
  • Access and availability of animal-related services and resources, and your project/organization’s or its partner’s plans to address any identified access or availability issues.
  • Stakeholder influence mapping
  • Assessments of target behaviours’ likelihood of adoption and extent of current practice

1.2.2 Understand the lives of the target audience and context of the behaviours targeted for change

In addition, depending on the type of SOC approach, the following participatory tools can be used with representative demographics of the target audience as part of a gender analysis to help understand people’s lives, daily routines, general availability, and potential burdens and challenges they may face to participation and behaviour change.

Consulting key informants and other knowledgeable members of the animal owning communities and target audiences will assist you to gauging public opinion, and understanding trends in practices, beliefs, cultural influence, and attitudes. Understanding the perspectives of relevant stakeholders, including those that are rendered voiceless for lack of access to or power to voice their issues is important to informing your development of effective outreach messaging in later steps.

Ensure you frame questions properly, for instance, asking “who are your community leaders” may be more usefully approached by asking “who do you turn to when you need help or when there are issues within the community” this way you will start to gain insight about who the respected and potentially the most influential people within the target community might be.

Through these discussions, seek to explore the following if you have not already gained these insights elsewhere:

  • Attitudes and behaviours of the community towards those target behaviours you want to encourage as well as those you want to discourage. Understanding why certain behaviours/practices are prepared or considered as normal even if understood as harmful to animals’ welfare can be useful to informing your outreach strategy.
  • General awareness and interest in changing animal welfare issues, and the general stage of change in relation to the adoption of the new behaviour. You can do this by listening for change talk and posing open-ended questions to provide an indication of where the target audience’ is in their stages of change related to the animal welfare issues the project is seeking to address. Understanding where people are in their stage of change can enable you to tailor your outreach strategy and messaging to support progress more effectively through different stages. Refer to the following facilitator resources for more information: 3. Guidance on Listening to Change Talk and 6. Techniques for Supporting Progress through the Stages of Change.
  • Their priority values and motivations. Understanding what people value and why is important because it enables messages to be framed in terms of what matters to the target audience.
  • Forms of communication most utilized by target audience – where and when do they get their information, who are the trusted and influential sources or gatekeepers?
  • Understanding any factors preventing the target audiences’ from practicing the desired behaviours in terms of capability, opportunity, and motivation, including influencing groups that make sustaining the desired behaviour easier or difficult. This may be where you seek to explore gaps in your understanding identified during the COM-B diagnosis. Refer to example discussion questions within the facilitator resource 11. Behaviour Change/COM-B Diagnosis Community Questions Guide for ideas on questions to structure this discussion.

To support the documentation of key findings and insights, consider using or adapting the Project action tracker provided in the facilitator resources.

Link to References Cited


2.1 Identify Outreach Strategy

QUICK LINKS
2.1.1 Finalize selection of priority target behaviours based on audience understanding
2.1.2 Define what outreach activities need to achieve to support target audience’s adoption of desired behaviours
2.1.3 Identify communication strategy/activities for reaching target audience and supporting their adoption of desired behaviours
2.1.4 Develop monitoring plan
Tools and resources helpful to supporting this step

2.1.1 Finalize selection of priority target behaviours based on audience understanding

Now that you have gained deeper understanding of the target audience in relation to prioritized target behaviours, make a final selection of the target behaviour this SOC will focus on. You can revisit results from your original prioritization of target behaviours and reassess the behaviours to see if priorities may have changed based on insights gained from your target audience assessment. Alternatively, if through your target audience assessments, you have identified barriers to change which are unlikely to be addressed through an outreach campaign, you may wish to consider:

  1. Revisiting the full list of behaviours originally identified and select new alternative actions/behaviours to target using criteria for prioritizing behaviours based on understanding gained from audience insight assessment (refer to criteria in section 1.1.4.)
  2. Identifying other projects or stakeholders, addressing any identified barriers to behaviour change, and/or consider partnering or integrating your outreach project within the work of others to address critical barriers to change beyond the scope of your outreach project to address
  3. As part of the process of finalizing the selection of the target behaviour, consider organizing a workshop to share and validate your understanding of audience insights. It is useful to engage other stakeholders to be part of this validation process (e.g. community-based organizations (CBOs) or other likeminded national and international organizations). This can enable sharing of useful insights, avoid duplication of efforts, and identify potential opportunities for collaboration or partnership which can strengthen the project and support delivery of outreach messaging. Engaging stakeholders early in the planning phase can help improve joint ownership of project aims and outcomes, and better mitigate potential risks and challenges. Engaging these different stakeholders can also bring valuable insights and expertise regarding safeguarding and promoting gender equality considerations expertise.

A Behaviour Change Planning Table has been provided in the facilitator’s resource which you can update with selected target behaviours, target audience, and COM-B barriers to change identified from previous steps (Steps 1-3 in the table).

2.1.2 Define what outreach activities need to achieve to support target audience’s adoption of desired behaviours

You now understand the barriers and benefits of the behaviours you want to encourage and discourage. Next, you will need design an effective strategy for how to tackle each behaviour. Activities must be carefully planned to avoid unnecessarily reinforcing inequality or doing harm to people in your community. Ensure attention to gender mainstreaming considerations throughout the planning process (refer to the facilitator resource 1. Gender Mainstreaming Checklist for further guidance).

For your SOC strategy to support behaviour change, you must bear in mind the stages of change from awareness to action when planning the timing and sequencing of messages. First, identify whether the target audience is ready to change and design activities to engage them only when they are ready. Next, identify the types, timing, and series of activities needed to move audiences step-by-step towards behaviour change goals.

Theory of change, in this case using the COM-B framework, helps to determine the most effective ways to influence target audiences. Describe in a few simple sentences or on a chart what your outreach or campaign is intending to achieve and how. This will enable to you manage expectations about what the project can and cannot do for the community. In addition, it is recommended to design this with representative members of your target audience and discuss with people who know nothing about your project, to check the logic for how change can be achieved and ensure it is clearly understood and hasn’t missed something or relied on misinformed assumptions. See diagram below to guide the process.

Figure 52: Example Theory of Change for changing animal health care service seeking behaviour to address preventable animal disease and death (adapted from [76])

Figure 52: Example Theory of Change for changing animal health care service seeking behaviour to address preventable animal disease and death (adapted from [76])

As behaviour change is rarely a simple process and behaviours usually comprise numerous sub-behaviours look to designing a step-by-step communication approach that can move people towards the desired action incrementally. Begin with behaviours that have minimal skill requirements and are relatively easily attainable for your target community then gradually build in further steps that require more complex effort.

For sustained use of the new target behaviour, you will need to think about using behaviour specific prompts to remind and engage people, particularly if the target behaviour is repetitive and not just a one off. So, ensure the prompt is noticeable and self-explanatory – perhaps a pictorial prompt, which could be placed in a stable or barn, for instance to remind owners about giving sufficient clean water. Alternatively, think about ways in which the target behaviour can be linked to an existing habit or routine behaviour.

Social norms influence community behaviour, they are the rules and beliefs governed by peer-to-peer interactions. Ensure any recommendation included in your messaging are connected to the community’s social norms, encouraging respected influencers within the community to act as early adopters and enlist community leaders or well respected and influential members of the community who can help spread the message via social diffusion. To do this find members of the target audience who are keen to be involved and are influential within their own community, for instance, animal owners are more likely to observe and adopt similar practices if they see other animal owners practicing the target behaviour and showing positive results from doing so [31].

Asking for a commitment from early adopters to practice the target behaviour and in addition speak to their peers about what they are doing and why, is effective for longer term sustainable change. For social diffusion to work well the behaviour must be visible to others, so start with target behaviours where others can see what is being done, for instance changes to harnessing equipment or erecting a shelter. Using influencers within the community can increase confidence in what is being suggested and lower barriers to the adoption of the target behaviours.

2.1.3 Identify communication strategy/activities for reaching target audience and supporting their adoption of desired behaviours

After diagnosing what needs to change and having identified what your outreach activities need to achieve make that change it should be possible to identify the communication strategy that will be most effective at achieving the desired change. It is recommended to use the Behaviour Change Wheel to support the identification of intervention functions and behaviour change techniques (BCTs). The Behaviour Change Wheel provides a systematic and theoretically guided method for identifying the most effective strategies to implement to support adoption of a desired behaviour. Refer to facilitator resource 13. Guidance On Identifying Effective Behaviour Change Strategies Based On Com-B Diagnosis based on the behaviour change wheel.


Gender mainstreaming and safeguarding considerations are extremely important and different target actors may require different considerations, channels of communication and methods, and design of activities. Evaluate how to best promote equal access to communication, and when selecting representative messengers ensure equality in representation (e.g. not just men or non-marginalized groups etc.). Most importantly do no harm; when employment in a particular role may force actors outside the social norm you must socialize acceptance of this more broadly, or it could cause communications to be poorly received and cause fallout/backlash to them or the project.

Once you have identified the intervention functions, and related BCTs use the APEASE criteria, adapted from [21], to narrow your selection to those BCTs which meet the criteria to identify those most effective:

  • Acceptability: Is the outreach/campaign suitable for the target audience?
  • Practicability: Is the outreach or campaign appropriate for this context and are resources sufficient for implementation?
  • Effectiveness: How effective is it likely to be when considering the aims and objectives?
  • Affordability: Are the financial resources sufficient to support the SOC approach at the scale intended?
  • Side-effects: How likely is it to lead to unintended adverse or beneficial outcomes?
  • Equity: Does the approach ensure safeguarding, avoid discrimination and have you ensured it is not gender blind / gender exploitative? Sometimes consequences can be unintended (e.g. further legitimizes or exacerbates gender inequalities).

Developing behaviour change activities

Once you have selected the BCTs that meet the APEASE criteria, identify outreach/ campaign activities in line with the selected BCTs and include these within the final column of the Behaviour Change Planning Table template provided in facilitator resource.

Use your understanding of your target audience to develop relevant activities that will appeal to them and be understood. Engage key influencers and leaders within your target community to help guide which activities will be most appropriate to reach the target audience. The aim is to develop a mix of communication activities that address all (or as many as possible) of the “changes your activities need to achieve” (see Step 4 of the Behaviour Change Planning Table), recognizing the same activity can address more than one of the changes that need to be achieved [20].
It is important to note that for any one behaviour targeted for change, a variety of methods and communication messages may be needed to promote desired changes and address animal welfare practice gaps amongst different target audiences and their access to different modes of communication are considered (guidance on developing messaging provided in section 2.2.1).

When developing behaviour change activities, it is recommended to at the very least use the following advice based on research from The Behavioural Insights Team about what makes behaviour change activities most successful, by checking that any behaviour change strategies you decide to implement are designed to make doing the behaviour EAST: Easy, Attractive, Social and Timely [20]:

  • Easy: Learn what makes practicing the behaviour difficult and help your priority groups to make it easier – involving less hassle, time, or money. If you promote a complex goal, break it down into smaller actions.
  • Attractive: People are motivated to do something when it brings them what they want most, such as income, peace of mind, happiness, or good health. Ensure that your activities help people experience the benefits of practicing the behaviour by, for example, letting them test it (e.g. experience using a new type of welfare friendly equipment); sharing successful examples (e.g. of an animal owning family who reduced the incidence of animal illness by adopting the promoted prevention techniques); and using appealing messages that engage people’s emotions.
  • Social: People are heavily influenced by what people around them do. So, let’s take advantage of it! Showing that some people already practice the promoted behaviour, using the power of social networks (e.g. peer-to-peer), or encouraging people to commit to someone to practice a behaviour often works well!
  • Timely: The same activity conducted at different times can have drastically different levels of success. Schedule your activities for when people are most receptive and available (e.g. scheduling activities so they don’t occur when people are busy with work or engaged in special events, promoting preventative animal health checks after harvest when people have money; posting feed preparation messages next to where animals’ feed is prepared).

When planning and budgeting for behaviour change activities, It is recommended to build in some flexibility to project work plans and budgets to enable you to address (at least some of the) barriers, which might not have been thought of earlier [20].

When thinking about behaviour change activities, it is also useful to ask - What are the channels of communication and methods or techniques that are most likely to effectively reach the target communities you are trying to engage with? While you may have limited direct contact or time with your target audience, involving your target audience to the extent feasible increases the likelihood of success of your outreach.

Consider the following recommendations for increasing community involvement in your outreach activities:

  • Generate two-way communication, discussion, and dialogue amongst the target audience to the extent feasible by selecting channels of communication effective for reaching your target audience which support interactive activities (e.g. face to face, radio, TV, or social media). One-way communication using posters, booklets or leaflets alone is not enough to stimulate behaviour change to improve animal welfare.
  • When designing activities, use communication methods that enable people to feel and express their experiences related to the problem behaviour and animal welfare issue, and its potential solutions. Seek to involve and stimulate interaction with your target audience as much as possible, as well as the sharing of experiences and learning between them.
  • Identify role models and champions to share their stories over interactive programs (TV, radio, larger community events, etc.). Other people can hear from those who are performing the behaviour, feel self-efficacy and excitement, create social norms. Using them as champions will also help them further maintain their behaviour as it helps them to be acknowledged and recognized and feel good about their animal welfare improvement efforts.
Figure 53: Understanding approaches that work best – two-way communication on the right in the picture is much more engaging and effective than the one-way communication pictured on the left in the image.

Figure 53: Understanding approaches that work best – two-way communication on the right in the picture is much more engaging and effective than the one-way communication pictured on the left in the image.

Whenever feasible, consider methods and tools that meaningfully involve people (e.g. through experiential learning, participatory approaches, using Motivational Interviewing principles, and values-based communication). For example, a cat population control national outreach campaign in the UK seeking to increase cat neutering rates effectively used values-based communication to frame their messages to reflect the human characteristics and behaviours owners often attribute to their cats to help appeal to people about the well-being of the cat.

The following section provide an overview of commonly used communication channels and outreach methods for consideration when designing your outreach activities.

Channels of Communication for Community Outreach

Channels of communication refers to the platform or technology through which messages are delivered (e.g. what, or where). You should have identified during your audience insight assessment the most relevant channels of preferred by your target audience(s) including understanding how they prefer to receive messages, what routes of information distribution they trust and the most effective format. If this has not yet been identified, discuss this with representative members of your target community and observe when and where they get different kinds of information that is useful to them:

Examples of communication channels include:

  • Interpersonal channels: one-on-one contact, opinion formers/influencers/thought leaders who support delivery of messages and act/model desired changes
  • Modern media channels: radio, TV, internet such as social media
  • Traditional media: story-telling and traditional cultural performances
  • Community-oriented - using existing social networks
  • Special occasions: In some countries animals are used during special occasions, such as religious pilgrimages, festivals, and weddings in India. These may provide an opportunity to set up animal welfare camps or events together with a local organization or institution.
  • Exhibitions, fairs, and field days: These could be fairs attended by animal owning communities or where animals are traded, or annual exhibitions organized by the local authority on trade and agriculture. Exhibitions and fairs can be used as a platform for sensitizing animal owners and users, traders, government and wider society to welfare themes and good practices.
Figure 54:  Community Animal Market

Figure 54: Community Animal Market

Figure 55: Watering points as social/animal congregation hotspots

Figure 55: Watering points as social/animal congregation hotspots

  • Congregation or social gathering points: such as marketplaces, washing areas, feed stores and water points. It should be noted that it can be quite challenging at times to work with animal owners and users at congregation points during their working day or social gathering places if they have little time and opportunity to be actively engaged. In such circumstances, the desired outcomes of engagement need to be carefully considered to determine the most appropriate method of communication for such places. In addition, you should assess whether this channel of communication and identified methods of communication are appropriate to the situation and best suited to the achievement of desired outcomes.
  • Awareness campaigns: Awareness or communication campaigns are one of the most important channels for delivering messages to large target audiences. However, the messages selected, mode of transmission, media of transmission and timing consideration are determining factors. Linking campaigns with other appropriate events can be even more effective in enabling them to achieve their intended aims.

Community Outreach Methods

Outreach methods refers to the strategies or activities through which messages are delivered (e.g. how messages are communicated). There are many methods of communication that you could use to deliver your outreach messages. Consult individuals from representative demographics within your target audience to aid in selecting the best method. Wherever possible, involve them in creation of the media and messages as well (see section 2.2.1. for more information on developing messaging). Examples of commonly used outreach methods are provided below, with more detailed guidance on the variety of different communication methods provided in the Recommended Readings and External Resources section of this approach.

  1. Using Key Influencers as Messengers: Engaging influencers, who people respect and can relate to, as agents of change and key messengers is always helpful as this can give voice to lived experiences of people to better highlight why the desired behaviour change is needed and how that change has helped them.
  2. Contests and competition: These can be very effective for engaging animal owners and users, whether they are children, youth, or adults. The key to effectiveness is people’s full participation in deciding the criteria for winning and then selecting the best-kept or happiest animal. Competitions can be organized within a village or between villages.
  3. Community mobile shows: This group of effective methods includes talking, storytelling, song, dance, theatre, and puppet shows. There are many ways of using these to create awareness about animal welfare, either by involving animals directly in the drama or by using the drama to enact and stimulate discussion on a local animal welfare issue. Community drama enables animal owners, users, carers, and other stakeholders to participate by outlining their fears, needs and aspirations about their animals. See external resources for more details.
Figure 56: Mobile Community Theatre

Figure 56: Mobile Community Theatre

  1. Recorded songs or stories are often very popular and can be played using low cost, low-tech communication systems such as car batteries or a generator. During meetings, public gatherings, fairs, and exhibitions, recorded materials can be used as part of interactive discussions in large forums. These recorded programmes can focus on specific animal management practices or cover more general welfare themes. Material can be recorded with the help of professional teams, or by the community itself. An example of community-generated recording is the use of Participatory Videography, (see the further reading and reference list for a good manual on participatory video).
  2. Radio Programming: Organizing interactive radio programmes is good and this can also be supplemented with radio listeners groups if this SOC approach is being used to complement CD approach. Moreover, enabling the journalists to invite experts in the studio for an interactive segment might be good. Another element is to facilitate working to visit by journalists or radio program drama writers to different areas to enhance the program is grounded on people’s reality and by enabling them to interview different people’s experiences or challenges or more particularly those who can be described as models or early adopters of the desired behaviour will give colour to the radio program and enhances audience’s engagement. However, it is important to note that journalist may not have an animal welfare background and they might need an initial training as well as support in the crafting of messages and program sequencing. Another element to consider is the value for money of radio programmes in terms of prime-time vs budget required; and the social responsibility of media houses behind this to ensure appropriate messaging by the radio station. (At least they need to have a do no harm in their other programs) to ensure they are credible source of information.
  3. Posters, murals, leaflets, and newsletters: Posters should be used for brief animal welfare messages and work best if the message is visual. Leaflets may be used to communicate more technical information. Make sure that you know the literacy level of your target group when making leaflets. Community members in some communities may not be literate so written leaflets may not be best for them, although they could be very effective in promoting good welfare to agricultural outreach staff.
  4. Murals or billboards highlighting various issues have often been used by advertising agencies to pass messages to people from all walks of life. They normally integrate visuals to help imprint on people’s minds. They should have relatively simple, catchy, and appealing visuals, conveying a particular theme and message, and be strategically placed in high use areas such as near main roads, churches, schools, watering points and at market centres.
  5. Newsletters can be useful for literate audiences and are used for a variety of reasons including:

    Sharing success and learning between animal-owning groups within a district, inspiring and developing an element of competition and pride between these groups by:
    • providing evidence and stories of success,
    • providing public recognition of success which increases the self-esteem of group members,
    • providing technical information and promote indigenous technical knowledge.
  1. Involvement of Schools: Schools can be the broadest channel for disseminating knowledge and helping communities to develop healthy attitudes and practices. Teachers are in regular contact with school children and their parents. They are also influential and respected members of their communities. With guidance from their teachers, school children can also become welfare messengers within their own families and communities, for example, establishing animal welfare clubs through schools can raise student awareness on animal welfare issues so that children serve as change agents influencing their parents. To attain these objectives, first and foremost engaging directors and teachers is important and through them bringing attitudinal changes of students is possible. The following considerations and tasks are important in the process of engaging with schools.

    These include (but not limited to):
    • Identifying schools used by the target community.
    • Train school club members, provide additional coaching support to school clubs and more particularly to girls and/or children from vulnerable/marginalized animal owning families.
    • Select candidate schools for disseminating animal welfare messages by setting criteria (such as student population, availability of equipment for message dissemination, animal population in the school surrounding communities, willingness of the school administrators to work on animal welfare issues).
    • Allowing for and agreeing on sufficient time, locations, and staff members to take part in initial engagement and training on animal welfare messaging to be disseminated.
    • Understanding potential safeguarding needs of students and ensuring measures are put in place to mitigate safeguarding issues.
    • Inviting selected school community for sessions to provide engagement and training on animal welfare messaging to be disseminated.
    • Conducting the engagement and facilitating discussions on animal welfare issues.
    • Assessing the capacity of each school to undertake animal welfare promotion activities and identifying the supporting resources needed to implement it and potential sources for obtaining them.
    • Preparing small action plans and signing memorandum of understanding. The plans may include (but not limited to): animal welfare club establishment, preparing animal welfare messages by talented students, disseminating the messages both inside and external to the school environment, preparing follow up and monitoring mechanisms.
    • Designing joint follow up and reviewing mechanisms and reporting modalities.

Depending on the project’s aims, target audience, channels of communication, and outreach methods, you might wish to consider use of the following participatory tools as part of your outreach activities:

Animal Welfare Snakes and Ladders Game (T16)
‘If I were an animal’ (T17)
Thriving not surviving (T18)
Animal Feeling Analysis (T19)
Story Telling (T24 a, b, c)
Animal Welfare Conversation Tool (T32)

To help ensure the effectiveness of your activities, consider referring to the SOC approach’s recommended readings and external resources section related to your chosen communication channels and methods for additional guidance before developing or implementing your outreach activities and communication materials.

2.1.4 Develop monitoring plan    

Now that you have developed your outreach strategy, you must determine how best to assess its success by developing a monitoring plan that includes indicators of success, sampling parameters including size and representation of different demographics, monitoring methods and related data collection tools, as well as frequency of monitoring. It is helpful to design your monitoring framework and indicators in a participatory manner with the some of the target audience and any other users of the information as they can provide useful feedback to help inform and adapt your monitoring plan and generate support for your outreach or campaign by the relevant stakeholders.

As sometimes behaviour change is a dynamic journey that faces backlash, resistance, and relapse; it is best practice to devise a group or supporting organization that can easily monitor such subtle changes frequently (e.g. monthly) to ensure ease of recall; capturing this may not necessarily be in a written report but captions, photos, video, and so on. Photos are a great way to facilitate participatory monitoring and generate content for outreach materials/discussions/viewing on digital or video platforms.

Identify Indicators of Success

The first step in developing your monitoring plan is to identify indicators of success now that you have identified what your outreach activities aim to achieve. Indicators may be quantitative or qualitative but need to be measurable which you can ensure by designing them so that they are SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound.

What indicators enable you to assess the success of your SOC project? Think about driving a car – you don’t have to know what each part of the engine is doing; you just need to know the key elements that mean the car is working. The dashboard, therefore, doesn’t include 100 or more different measures of how the engine is performing, it just gives you an indication of the key things – fuel, oil, etc. and a big red light usually comes on if you really need to stop! This is like the approach to measuring progress of our outreach work. You cannot monitor every single element but must focus on monitoring what you expect will change because of your outreach project. Above all keep things simple and develop a small number of indicators to capture changes. Ensure indicators you select can support disaggregated analysis of results by target audience demographics relevant to your project (e.g. men, women, marginalized groups, urban/rural etc.). This will enable you to assess how successful the project was in equitably reaching different demographics and help identify when you may need to adapt your strategy to better reach some groups.

When thinking about what to assess, consider the following:

  1. Impact Indicators: indicators allow you to assess progress towards higher level goals. Impact level indicators may be focused on how animal welfare has improved because of the project by assessing the following:
    • Indicators of animal welfare that reflect what you would expect to improve due to the project e.g. number of, or severity of wounds, disease prevalence or severity.
  2. Outcome Indicators: outcome indicators should enable determination of the extent to which project activities achieved their stated aims. This will include indicators of behaviour change for SOC projects designed with an aim of changing behaviour. Cognitive variables such as attitude and knowledge change among individuals and in wider society are also commonly used indicators for assessing outreach and awareness raising campaigns’ success. Outcome indicators are also often related to the identified barriers to behaviour change which the project is seeking to address. Consider assessing changes in perceptions (attitudes) or awareness, ability (e.g. knowledge, skills), availability of/access to information/communications/support e.g. “XX% of women animal owners who know where to seek quality animal health services” (refer to Behaviour Change Planning Table step 4) [20].
  3. Output Indicators: indicators related to output should enable assessment of how well the project activities were implemented, as opposed to measure the resultant changes that emerge because of activities.
    • Refer to project activities you listed in the Behaviour change planning table (step 4) and develop indicators for each activity. For example:
      • Total number of male/female animal owning community members attending educational event.
      • Total number radio programmes delivered
      • Total number of educational posters or murals displayed publicly
      • Amount of traffic increase on a website after outreach

When behaviour change is the aim of your project, it is also helpful to assess the following in addition to behavioural indicators outlined above [20]:

  • Why people practice the promoted behaviours? - such findings provide extremely useful lessons for further promotion of these behaviours
  • Why do people not practice the promoted behaviours? - such findings are crucial for understanding factors which may be undermining success of your project, and help you re-evaluate and/or adapt your strategy.

Once identified, update the Behaviour Change Planning Table with selected indicators (see step 6).

Figure 57: Identifying Project Monitoring Indicators

Figure 57: Identifying Project Monitoring Indicators

Identify Monitoring Methods and Tools

Once you have identified monitoring indicators you can then select the data collection method of data collection (e.g. KIIs, FGDs, Surveys, secondary sources of data, photos etc.) and develop appropriate data collection tools as needed, as well as define your sampling parameters. Consider the following when determining the methods and tools to measure success:

  • Think about where you may be able to rely on existing data sources or use participatory monitoring methods e.g. website traffic; radio broadcast demographics/reach; records of treatments or observations of animal health service providers,
  • Feedback from members of the target audience can be used for monitoring and evaluation purposes. Consider establishing feedback mechanisms or proactively reaching out to different demographics within your target audience or engaging a small group of proactive engaged target audience for their opinions and suggestions about the content and value of communications, and effectiveness of the project and whether it has affected their animal care and management practices.
  • If considering self-reporting methods for capturing attitudes and attitudinal change (i.e. members of the target audience report on change), responses may be distorted by the respondents’ wish to give socially acceptable or desirable answers. To overcome this, you can triangulate data by obtaining information from 2 or 3 sources and use observation to give a broad perspective of the effectiveness of the programme.
  • Ensure whatever monitoring methods and tools you select will enable you to collect data from/about relevant demographics within the target audience so you can assess the extent to which your outreach activities have equally reached and been effective proportionately across demographics. This is particularly important to assess to ensure your project has effectively understood and tailored its approach to address the different realities of target group demographics, and not further contributed to the marginalization of particularly vulnerable
  • SOC projects often aim to reach large numbers of people often indirectly, so it is important to strike a balance between sufficient sample size to evaluate project success, ensuring inclusion of relevant representative demographics within the target audience (e.g. men, women, marginalized groups), and not overburdening the project. Think about how data will be used and by whom and aim to sample sufficiently to suite your purposes. For example, the understanding needed by your project requires a differently level of data reliability and certainty than would publishing results in a scientific paper.
  • Applying a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection gives a more in depth understanding for evaluating project success.
Figure 58: Examples of Triangulating Data Sources to Assess Project Success

Figure 58: Examples of Triangulating Data Sources to Assess Project Success

Determine Monitoring Timelines and Responsibilities

Once you have identified your monitoring methods and tools, decide how often you are going to collect data on the different indicators, who is responsible for collecting and analysing it, and how will the results be shared, including both unexpected and undesirable outcomes.

Consider the following recommendations when deciding when to collect data [20]:

  1. At the project’s start: conduct a baseline survey of the projects’ selected impact and outcome indicators
  2. At the end of the project: conduct an end line assessment to measure the animal welfare indicators and percentage of priority group members who practice the promoted behaviours and compare this to the results of your baseline assessments. It is recommended the end line assessment also assess the main reasons why people (did not) adopt the promoted behaviours.
  3. 6 months- 2 years after the project: replicate the end line assessment of impact and outcome indicators to assess the extent to which changes have been sustained after the project.

Link to References Cited


2.2 Develop and Pilot Messaging and Prepare to Implement Planned Activities

QUICK LINKS
2.2.1 Develop messaging and pilot test with target audience
2.2.2 Develop delivery plan and prepare for implementation
Tools and resources helpful to supporting this step

2.2.1 Develop messaging and pilot test with target audience

Now that you have developed your outreach strategy and are clear on how its success will be assessed, you need to develop the messaging and any associated resources to support their delivery. Promote representativeness within all messaging to ensure they are inclusive of all members of the community, including those known to be marginalized. The messaging must not promote existing systems of discrimination or be gender blind / gender exploitative, and should ensure safeguarding of vulnerable groups. Use the understanding you’ve gained throughout previous steps of the perspectives and lived experiences of different social groups within your target audience to help you develop effective, well-targeted outreach messaging. In this way, your messaging can provide a channel that gives voice to vulnerable groups of people and the challenges they face when trying to address animal welfare issues and any related impacts on their lives. By bringing different narratives to light, your outreach efforts can improve recognition and understanding of marginalized groups’ interests more broadly and facilitate greater consideration or and influence by these groups in decision making at individual, group, society, or government levels.

ATTENTION: Understand the power of language and imagery and that certain words, phrasing, or images can perpetuate inequalities, division, or cause harm. Think about how your communications and representations can promote equality by showing marginalized or traditionally discriminated members of your target audience in roles such as key decision makers, respected leaders, successful businesspeople, rather than by representations reflective of their socially ascribed status (e.g. women as caretakers, or lower social status associated with origins of birth, religion, or caste). Consider how your messages may be interpreted by others and ensure those who are already marginalised are included when developing messaging to ensure your messaging does no harm.

Pilots test the activities on a small scale before rolling it out to the whole community, this enables any issues with language (such as terminology) or gaps in guidance and information, are identified and overcome before you begin.

To run a pilot, you need to decide:

  • How will you test the activity and with whom? - include representatives of all relevant demographics within the target audiences to assess its effectiveness from the perspective different lived experiences. Including key influencers and gatekeeper is also essential at this stage to generate buy in.
  • How are you going to develop activities which enable inclusivity, gender equality and are non-discriminatory? Check with key demographics from target audience for their recommendations about timings, locations and accessibility and identification of potential risks or needs.
  • How will you assess the quality of the activity? For example, what kind of feeling/emotions the messaging stimulates in the audience / others.
  • How will you assess the results and determine the consequences or unexpected issues?
  • How will you collect and use feedback to guide and adapt the SOC project?

Once activities have been piloted on a small scale, use findings to refine initial messages and consider engaging representative demographics to ensure your changes have suitably addressed any issues, or re-pilot on a small scale depending on the extent and nature of changes as needed.

Refer to the facilitator resource 7. Guidance on Effective Outreach Messaging for more detailed guidance on designing successful outreach communications.

2.2.2 Develop delivery plan and prepare for implementation

Once activities and messaging are finalized you can begin to develop your plans for delivery and begin preparing for implementation.

Begin to secure any channels of communication and necessary materials or resources needed to support delivery of activities if you have not done so already. This includes coordinating support from any key influencers, gatekeepers, or messengers you have identified to support the delivery of communications. If you have identified needs or opportunities for partnering or collaborating with other projects or stakeholders to support achievement the projects’ desired changes, you will need engage them in your planning and work out the logistics together. Preparations may also require capacity building of individuals or groups supporting implementation.

Ensure project action plans are realistic and achievable. When making the SOC action plan, it is important to identify the resources and support needed to implement activities (e.g. posters, role play scripts etc.). Once identified, you can begin developing or securing identified resources. Planning discussions are also a good time to discuss how to implement outreach and campaign activities in a way that promote equality and participation, regardless of gender or other status (e.g. migratory status and literacy levels).

Developing the action plan for your SOC project

So now is the time to think who will do what, when and work out how you are going to deliver. Even if your SOC project may appear straightforward and simple, plan for delivery is needed to ensure effective use of resources and a distribution of responsibilities for all activities. Delivery plans should map out clearly the route your SOC approach will take and need to include:

  1. The goal, outcomes or objectives, and deliverables linked to the specific activities. Outcomes or objectives should consider both the quantity and quality to be achieved (e.g. desired behaviour change in the target audience).
  2. Precise action steps, i.e. the specific tasks and their components. What needs to be done first? What actions must be completed before others can begin? What activities are needed to motivate which target audiences to take the desired actions? Sort actions in roughly chronological order and set priorities. It is important to identify any special consideration or safeguarding measures associated with the implementation of different actions to ensure responsible parties are aware and accountable them.
  3. Distribute tasks and record this to ensure everyone is clear and accountable for their part in the project and outcomes/ milestones and monitoring can be evaluated regularly throughout the process. A RAG (red, amber, green) status can help keep a simple record of where in the process the task is currently situated.

    Record in a simple table such as the one below:
TaskWho is responsible?Completion dateResources required
and any other key considerations
e.g. safeguarding, locational
Expected outcome/ milestoneRAG status
  1. Record milestones or outcomes that mark the completion of a step.
  2. Identify and note potential barriers to successfully implementing the project, including risks and risk management. Some examples of potential risks include gatekeepers unsupportive of the project and hinder or discredit messaging, poor reception or resistance from communities, poor understanding, or provision of safeguarding considerations for implementing agents and vulnerable groups, potential related reputational risks.
  3. Milestones show progress in activities, but it is also necessary to monitor the broader outcomes the campaign contributes to for identification of new opportunities and threats.
  4. Include a contingency plan to guide you through adverse situations - if something happens, you need to think about how you might need to redesign the activities, postpone, or suspend them altogether. Planning for the worst means you are always prepared and ready to adapt and succeed. Some examples of potential scenarios for which contingencies may need to be considered include weather impediments to activity delivery, power failures or technology issues, unexpected unavailability of target audience, illness of key influencers or individuals responsible for delivering a scheduled event etc.

Tools and resources helpful to supporting this step include:

Facilitator Resources
7. Guidance on Effective Outreach Messaging

Link to References Cited


3.1 Deliver Social Outreach/Campaign

QUICK LINKS
3.1.1 Conduct baseline assessment in accordance with monitoring plan indicators
3.1.2 Implement social outreach/awareness campaign activities
3.1.3 Assess understanding and effectiveness of messaging amongst target audience
Tools and resources helpful to supporting this step

3.1.1 Conduct baseline assessment in accordance with monitoring plan indicators

A baseline assessment should be conducted before any activities take place as it provides a critical reference point for assessing changes and impact because of activities implemented. Note that this baseline assessment should be conducted once the intervention has been designed, although any animal welfare data collected during the preliminary assessment (step 1.1.1.) may be usable depending on the nature of the data collected and indicators and methods outlined in your monitoring plan. Typically, the process will be managed by your project team and involve communities to the extent feasible in accordance with your monitoring plan. Change Analysis – before and now (T11b) will aid this process.

3.1.2 Implement social outreach/awareness campaign activities

Think about the types of actors who can support and aid your SOC approach; can community members be active in the distribution of messaging? Participatory leadership can encourage participants’ commitment to the campaign, giving empowerment and ownership, which will support the sustainability of behaviour change being encouraged.

Things to consider for effective implementation (adapted from [77]):

  • Engage with communities in ways that are most convenient for them.
  • Be respectful, listen, and build trusting relationships.
  • Make resources easily understandable in a format specific for your target audience
  • Monitor, evaluate, and ask for feedback regularly.
  • Expand your outreach gradually – begin with a population in a region/ zone that is the most comfortable and least challenging, and gradually expand out into populations that are less familiar and are more challenging. This gives the project opportunity to gain momentum and confidence and to benefit with feedback from an audience more willing or confident to give you constructive feedback for the project to develop and adapt where necessary.
  • Choose the space where you conduct some outreach activities carefully – think about access for all people, always consider intersectionality as some spaces may make some sectors of your community feel uncomfortable or unwelcome, know your target audience, and ensure safeguarding measures are put in place as needed to ensure the safety of all involved with or engaged by the programme.

Throughout the SOC approach keep in mind the strategy and your implementation plans and refer to them at regular intervals. Update your implementation plan table (as described in section 2.2.2.) if you are using one, to monitor the progress of tasks, including milestones reached and RAG (Red, Amber, Green) status. Maintain the information flow within the project team (e.g. systematic briefings and debriefings before and after outreach events).

3.1.3 Assess understanding and effectiveness of messaging amongst target audience

Refer to your monitoring plans and conduct activities using identified methods and tools throughout the course of the project. To support engagement and to assess the effectiveness of messaging as you implement activities, it is important to create opportunities for interaction with and feedback from the target audience by keeping a continuous flow of informal consultation and feedback. This is important to ensuring the target audience feel heard and included, and that their values and culture are being respected and considered. In addition, it will enable the project to determine whether messaging is being received as intended and communicating effectively with target audience and reflects what they value [77]. Providing these opportunities for ongoing communication and feedback can avoid potential conflict or rejection of messages and desired change.

Consider using the Project Action Tracker to document key insights and actions for follow up that emerge from meetings or site visits where feasible to support refinement of your SOC approach as needed. Learning and monitoring of effectiveness of your activities is not only about understanding the positive changes, but also enables the nuanced things or the negative/relapse or resistance or backlash views and voices to be captured. Depending on the type and depth/strength of the resistance or backlash, it is always important to consider putting safeguarding measures/precautions in place for those who do the public outreach/public interface engagement, whether in face to face or online formats.

Reflection and learning sessions with the target audience, or representative target audience members, can help you identify when behaviours are not being adopted because of unanticipated barriers to adoption that are beyond the scope of the project to address. In such cases it might be necessary to change targets and identify new welfare issues and associated behaviours to change instead. Monitoring during implementation ensures all involved in the approach stay informed of activities, their outcomes, and the degree to which goals and objectives are being met, and to recognise new opportunities or risks that may affect outcomes. In addition, monitoring regularly gives the opportunity to adapt the approach considering new understandings in how your community is interacting with the messaging and information. However, ensure that any adaptations are thought out, and go back through the previous steps of this approach to ensure there are no unforeseen negative consequences to any changes being considered.

No matter how well planned your approach, be ready and create contingency plans for mitigating risks. Even with plans unexpected events may still upset scheduled activities.

If facing unexpected issues, you need to assess:

  1. What happened? If possible, consult different community members or stakeholders to obtain a fuller picture. Listen carefully. Avoid directing blame.
  2. Establish who may be affected.
  3. Investigate what aspects of your SOC approach are affected.
  4. Can the issue/s be resolved, how and by whom?
  5. Analysis undertaken in earlier stages e.g. root cause analysis, influencer maps/rainbow diagram, and risk analysis, can be used to locate the issue and help identify possible options.
  6. Decide what action needs to be taken and inform all relevant members as soon as possible to decide together what further actions must follow.
  7. If actions fail to resolve the situation, assess whether the SOC approach can still reach its goal, if not you may need to consider the only other course of action, which is to exit.
  8. This is a learning opportunity so record the experience and be prepared to share with others.

Link to References Cited


4.1 Project Evaluation

QUICK LINKS
4.1.1 Conduct post-intervention end-line monitoring
4.1.2 Evaluate project effectiveness in achieving desired results and determine whether to exit project, and/or continue/adapt as needed
Tools and resources helpful to supporting this step

4.1.1 Conduct post-intervention end-line monitoring

Carry out final end-line monitoring on all indicators of indicators in accordance with the monitoring plan. The Change Analysis – before and now analysis (T11b) tool may be used to aid this process. Once data is analysed, compare end-line results with baseline assessment results to determine the extent to which project objectives, impacts, and outcomes were achieved. Identify successes as well as underperforming indicators for further follow-up discussion, reflection and learning with your team, representative members of the target audience, and any other relevant stakeholders. In cases where some values and behaviours are highly entrenched in the community norms/culture, the SOC project may be met with resistance or backlash. This however should not be construed as a failure, as behaviour change and cultural shifts are processes that take time to change and may require persistence, and continued efforts to achieve.

4.1.2 Evaluate project effectiveness in achieving desired results and determine whether to exit project, and/or continue/adapt as needed

Conduct an evaluation of the project using internal or external evaluators, with preference for using impartial third-party evaluators whenever feasible. These evaluations are particularly essential if desired behavioural change is not achieved as it will enable you to assess whether there is anything you could do to improve the project implementation strategy, or processes to improve outcomes. This can inform your decision as to whether you need to adapt the SOC approach using a different strategy or exit because the project is unlikely to achieve success.

Most often applying a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection gives a more in depth understanding to evaluate the project. The evaluation can be conducted ‘in –house’ by the team or using external actors. Evaluation should be participatory and involve stakeholders involved in the project as this will give an accurate overview of the project and how it was understood and accepted by the target community.

Evaluations should seek to assess the following in consultation with representative members of the target audience and other relevant stakeholders as appropriate (Adapted from [78]):

  • The appropriateness and effectiveness of any processes employed by the project to:
    • improve and sustain animal welfare and the adoption of desired behaviour change
    • promote participation of communities throughout all stages of the project, and
    • promote gender equality and safeguarding of vulnerable groups.
  • Stakeholder satisfaction with project. Consider assessing stakeholder perceptions related to the benefits and value of the project both in terms of animals and people, overall project accountability and transparency, satisfaction with the project/implementing organization, as well as recommendations for improvement.
  • Was the process as participatory and empowering as it was hoped for the partners/stakeholders and target audience in particular?
  • Check which of the strategies, modes of delivery as well as BCTs were effective in coining/framing the messages considering the APEASE criteria.

Ultimately, though it may be difficult to ascertain, try to see whether your communicated messages and the used modes of communication have resulted in tangible understanding of animal welfare and improvement in practicing/embracing animal welfare domains. As the SOC approach is about broader engagement and awareness, it may not be feasible to monitor how the population you have targeted are accurately doing in maintaining the action. If your project aimed to support changes in values and behaviour that have a strong cultural element or are embedded within the community, such change may be incremental and difficult to observe over a short time frame. This means that the evaluation may only be able to assess the basic indicators specifically identified as being important for this project, other benefits may only become apparent over a longer period, although, this is still sufficient to show that the project has been successful. Follow-up monitoring 1-2 years after the project can be useful for assessing the effectiveness of the project, as well as the sustainability of change, especially when conducted at repeated intervals.

Based on results of the assessment determine which of the following options is most appropriate and feasible:

  1. Withdrawal of outreach/ campaign efforts and exit: this option is recommended when:
    • The desired behavioural change and related animal welfare improvements have been achieved and there is evidence that this change is sustainable. For example, if you have a representative sample of your target audience who are in the maintenance stage of behaviour change using them as champions will help them maintain their behaviour but will be useful in the dissemination of the target welfare practices to community members. Some of the way to incentivise them could be using competition as well as allowing them to host local and regional level contests in the animal welfare practices, they have learned. Or,
    • When the desired behavioural change and related animal welfare improvements have not been achieved/seem unlikely to be sustained and feasibility of achieving them is unlikely.
  1. Continue outreach/ campaign efforts and do not exit: this option is recommended when desired behavioural change and related animal welfare improvements have not been achieved or are unlikely to be sustained due to issues with strategy, and the project has the necessary resources to continue supporting the project. In such cases, it is recommended you adapt the outreach/ campaign strategy and re-plan in collaboration with the community to continue working to achieve desired results.

Evaluation results and next steps in terms of gradual withdrawal of support or the project’s desire to continue support should be shared and discussed with the animal owning community and other relevant stakeholders for full transparency and accountability.

Schedule periodic communications with relevant community leaders or key stakeholders, social networks of target audiences, and/or local animal resource and service providers to discuss any challenges and provide support as needed to enable relevant parties to address them.

Consider including outreach activities to support continued maintenance of desired behaviours, provide reminders to action at relevant times (e.g. regular animal health checks), and/or continue fostering social norms to encourage the long-term sustainability of behavioural change as appropriate (e.g. radio or TV shows, posters, mobile messaging etc.).

Tools and resources helpful to supporting this step include:

Facilitator Resources
21. Example Questions for Evaluating Project Success

Link to References Cited