Applying Theory to Practice: Care's Journey Piloting Social Norms - Measures for  Gender Programming 

Beginning in 2014, a small team across CARE came together to develop and pilot new measures for social norms through an iterative learning process across three sites in Sri Lanka and Ethiopia. This report shares CARE's experience and learning on translating social norms theory into practical measurement tools for gender programming in resource-constrained settings, featuring the use of CARE's Social Norms Analysis Plot (SNAP).

Measurement Approach
CARE developed and tested out new measures for social norms based specifically on Bicchieri’s synthesis of social norms theory. This included starting from Bicchieri’s assumption that social norms are held in place by both empirical and normative expectations (EE and NE), and that the presence of both these expectations together indicate the presence of a social norm.

CARE sought to understand the following overarching questions for measurement of social norms within the context of program implementation:

•  What gendered social norms exist for the specific behavior or practice in question?
•  Do gendered social norms influence the behavior in question, and for whom?
•  Are social norms changing; if so, how and why?
•  What are the opportunities to catalyze norm change?