The Communication Initiative

lawhite_carimac · Joined: 27 Jul 2008 Posts: 2

This is a contribution to the Drum Beat Chat discussion forum. For information on how to participate or unsubscribe to this forum, and to view the discussion forum online, please visit the following link: http://forums.comminit.com/viewforum.php?f=49&style=2
===

As I read Professor Hassan's comment, I am reminded of the work of Hans Rosling at the Gapminder Foundation. The website gapminder.org shows animated graphs of development indicators of countries around the world - highlighting general trends. Will it ever be possible for us in communication for development to make presentations using animated graphs, like the ones at gapminder, to policymakers and funders? What would we need to do to get to that stage?

Livingston White

shassan · Joined: 04 Jun 2008 Posts: 3

This is a contribution to the Drum Beat Chat discussion forum. For information on how to participate or unsubscribe to this forum, and to view the discussion forum online, please visit the following link: http://forums.comminit.com/viewforum.php?f=49&style=2
===

Dr Livingston White's comments i feel hit the right nail in this forum.

It is readily admissible that cross-cultural measurement hence evaluation
are daunting if not an exercise in invalid (?) analysis and synthesis.
Norms in one's culture mat be extremes in others. Short term effects in
one socio-culture may be translated to long impacts in others.
Nevertheless in many societies superficial (?) evidence, from media,
indicate the pervasive diffusion and spread of digital acceptance. In
some cases, even the really way out secluded natives, are capable of
embracing and relishing the digital media. The e-Bario project in Sarawak
is an excellent example. To this day, it certainly impacts on the
peoples' lives.

Thus there is certainly a justification to find a standardized format,
albeit methodology, to evaluate impacts across cultures and norms. At the
very least, generic patterns and trends may be discernible.

Syed T S Hassan.
2350h, 28 July 2008.

--
Professor in Biostatistic, Biology(Ecology,Entomology).
B.Sc(Hons First Class) Univ New England.
M.Sc. Univ of Queensland.
Ph.d. Univ of Queensland.
Laureate in Science WCASC, Cambridge.
Adviser in Science to DG IBC, Cambridge.
FULBRIGHT SCHOLAR.
Royal Military College.

On Mon, July 28, 2008 20:47, lawhite_carimac wrote:

lawhite_carimac · Joined: 27 Jul 2008 Posts: 2

This is a contribution to the Drum Beat Chat discussion forum. We are currently discussing the issues brought up in Drum Beats 445, 446, and 447, which focus on World Bank Working Paper (#120), "Communicating the Impact of Communication for Development: Recent Trends in Empirical Research" by Nobuya Inagaki. For the opening note of this discussion, please see: http://forums.comminit.com/viewtopic.php?t=104018&style=2 For information on how to participate in or unsubscribe from this forum, and to view the archives of the forum online, please visit the following link: http://forums.comminit.com/viewforum.php?f=49&style=2
===

The paper does not provide a compelling impact case partly because it has a publication bias. One can understand that published articles were subject to peer-review and therefore present evidence based on rigorous methodologies. The paper also makes it clear that the articles selected from journals published in the last five years. What about studies that did not get published for whatever reason but still has some useful finding to share about the role of communication in development? What about evaluation reports submitted to donor agencies that were not intended for an academic journal audience but nevertheless may have contained evidence of the impact of communication for development?
I have always seen “impact” as a long term phenomenon and I do not believe some of the reviewed published studies – given the need to urgently publish research findings soon after a project is finished – would have been able to capture the real impact of the projects studied.
Did the studies actually report on “impact” or were they only about short-term “outcomes”. On page 25, a list of examples of evidence of behavior change is given. Shouldn’t the impact of adopting family planning as a result of listening to a radio soap opera be an overall reduction in population growth, or reduction in unwanted pregnancies? We need to start linking our interventions to overall goals (such as MDGs maybe?)and utilize country level indicators (not necessarily collated by the interventions implementing agency) as evidence of our success – it may not be directly linked but one could build a case that the intervention contributed.
While the paper covers content from a defined time period, one does not get a sense of place. References are made to the geographic location of some studies but the paper would have benefited from a discussion regarding the cultural context or location of the evidence. I can almost hear policy makers and funders saying that the fact that a certain communication approach worked in a particular country for targeting a particular issue does not mean it will work with equal success in another place. The paper is presented with much academic jargon and may need to be further translated in a mainstream, accessible, vivid way to be of any appeal to policymakers. If kept in its present state, an additional discussion on how to use the data presented in the paper to help make a case to policymakers would be helpful.

The paper has its strength in achieving something that needs to be done more often in our field. Congratulation to Nobuya for completing this review! More systematic reviews would help us to identify trends relating to what has worked and has not worked in communication for development. The weakness I think relates to the presentation of the data. Some of the tables such as 4 and 8 were not clear at first glance. Also the evidence presented emphasized more a description of various approaches used rather than the actual impact. One recognizes that many studies used qualitative data and therefore it would not be possible to quantify the impact being reported in many cases. This is not necessarily a weakness of the paper but a reality of evaluation mechanisms used in our field. Nobuya’s paper begins with introduction that discusses the UN MDGs. While reading the rest of the paper, one wondered how the projects reviewed were linked to specific MDGs and if such a linking wouldn’t also help to convince policymakers that the work being done in our field is actually being done within the context of the MDGs.

The fact that a more rigorous systematic review could not be done suggests that we need to be creating a common metric of how we report or present evaluation data. This metric would help us to compare studies across differing cultural contexts and help us present more convincing data for the impact of our work. I have no doubt that many communication for development projects succeed at what they set out to do. The real challenge now is to be able capture these successes in a systematic way and present them to policymakers and funders in formats that would convince them that communication for development does work.
Livingston White

siminyx · Joined: 31 Dec 1969 Posts: 11

This is a contribution to the Drum Beat Chat discussion forum. For information on how to participate or unsubscribe to this forum, and to
view the discussion forum online, please visit the following link:
http://forums.comminit.com/viewforum.php?f=49&style=2
===

I maybe late....but I have to add my two cents worth!!!
ah development world and its endless yards of paper trails probably going
many times around the world........the rhetoric about communication that
says nothing the endless stream of ideas that are written in donor friendly
language......all this communicates nothing to the people who are actually
in need of help.......we communicate and design for people like us..
there are however people who are in touch with the reality of others lives
and their lives are all about communication these are the people who are not
owned by agendas or organizations and their passion is humanity.
lets not design elaborate programs lets just each of us really truly realize
why we do what we do.........are we looking for self
gratification........for larger platforms....for funding......or are we
looking to create a safer ,peaceful cleaner world for our children?
how can there not be development????!!when we look around what do we
see??........but human morality suffers from severe apathy and though we may
become literate and effluent we as a people have chosen to be apathetic.
do any of you have ideas and programs to kick start the morality of
humanity??

simi raheal
r-vision international
pakistan

Javed · Joined: 12 Feb 2006 Posts: 15

This is a contribution to the Drum Beat Chat discussion forum. For information on how to participate or unsubscribe to this forum, and to view the discussion forum online, please visit the following link:
http://forums.comminit.com/viewforum.php?f=49&style=2
===

Dear Warren,

I am particularly interested to get your feedback on my comments on Inagaki's paper. I wrote those comments specially in response to your e-mail. Any agreement or disagreement? I welcome all! I will be happy to correct my views if there are better arguments.
I realize that these days, not many people have time to read long papers, even if they are about their job. Most people carry out their jobs without consulting literature, so long their bosses and donors are satisfied. Those who write papers, are also doing their job. Right?
Regards. Javed

On 6/24/08, Warren Feek <drumbeatchat@comminit.com (drumbeatchat@comminit.com)> wrote:

Javed · Joined: 12 Feb 2006 Posts: 15

This is a contribution to the Drum Beat Chat discussion forum. We are currently discussing the issues brought up in Drum Beats 445, 446, and 447, which focus on World Bank Working Paper (#120), "Communicating the Impact of Communication for Development: Recent Trends in Empirical Research" by Nobuya Inagaki. For the opening note of this discussion, please see: http://forums.comminit.com/viewtopic.php?t=104018&style=2 For information on how to participate in or unsubscribe from this forum, and to view the archives of the forum online, please visit the following link: http://forums.comminit.com/viewforum.php?f=49&style=2
===

Dear Colleagues:

Nobuya Inagaki in his seminal paper has beautifully and scholarly summed up the state of the art on the impact of communication for development, that was a joy to read. I have nothing but praise for the treatment and arguments presented and conclusions reached that show beyond any doubt that development process benefits from communication activities, may they be using interpersonal communication, entertainmenteducation/social marketing, or group communication approach. The scholastic style of the paper clearly shows its approach is professional and aimed at those critics of communication effort who are 'educated consumers' yet not fully convinced of the added value of investing resources on IEC type activities. I believe that many of them will be satisfied after reading and digesting this paper.

I can see the limitations as well as strengths of the paper that it only analyzes reliable and published papers. Otherwise, it would be interesting to know some cost-benefit analysis, even from the 'grey' world. An astute project manager may want to know how much is adequate to allocate for communication activities? What criterion should be used to select channels of communication that could be cheap (Radio) to most expensive (inter-personal)? How can be the incremental impact be determined by adding or subtracting funds for the communication effort? How important it is to evaluate a project with full blown social research quantitative methodology? Can sales and service statistics alone be good indicators of success?

My other comments are, perhaps, outside the realm of the discussion covered in the paper, or may be not, unless we take a broader view of the field which goes beyond what published papers cover. Since I am also a student of Everett Rogers Diffusion of Innovations theory, (ably highlighted by Inagaki), I find it fascinating that how often we forget the basics of his great work when designing or evaluating communication effort. By doing so, in my view, we undersell and undermine our own work and do not inform the donors the full extent of the return they receive on their investment, and that is besides making poor choices in our strategies. Let me clarify.

Rogers argued that the decision of accepting or rejecting a new idea is made through a process that a receiver passes through "from first knowledge to forming an attitude, to a decision to adopt or reject, to implementation of a new idea and to confirmation of this decision." These are five steps or stages of the process: 1) Knowledge (comes through awareness of the idea) (2) persuasion (when an individual forms a favorable or unfavorable attitude towards the idea; (3) decision (when individual decides to try out activities and accepts or reject the idea; (4) Implementation ( when an individual put the idea in use and (5) Confirmation (when adopting individual seeks confirmation form others of the new behavior. Upon receiving negative feedback, may discontinue the practice.)

If we agree on these steps, our communication strategies should be built around these simple steps. In other words, in any given population, intended target audience can be segmented using these five criteria. Using a HIV/AIDS prevention program, as an example, the segments may look like: (1) people who are not knowledgeable or those who have never heard of the disease or its consequences and method of prevention; (2) People who are generally knowledgeable and either believe or do not believe they are at risk; (3) they have a positive attitude and decide to try out condom or not to use condoms; (4) those who begin the practice of avoiding risky behavior by using condoms; and (5) adopters needing reassurance that what they are doing is ok and others in their reference group endorse.

If communication strategies are built to target these five categories of people and their subgroups, it will have numerous ramifications and advantages for communication planners. For example, communication needs of each group will differ and messages, channels and activities will vary accordingly, to suit each group's needs. This discussion is another story and will require a whole new book. I would love to know of any programme that uses such an approach.

This approach will also be extremely helpful when planning monitoring and evaluating communication projects. For instance, the impact of communication program may be on all five groups and distinguishable. Only judging of impact on the rate of adoption would be like underselling your results, because the percentage of persons who became knowledgeable or changed their attitudes should also count as achievements. I believe most evaluation exercises leave all that out. This is the reason that Inagaki's careful scrutiny of the research papers have found several nuggets as additional and unexpected outcomes (e.g., empowerment of women).

Concerning those who wants to be convinced of the impact of communication programs, they should look into the multi-billion dollars advertising industry. Businessmen who are always looking for ways to cut their expenses, would not spend a penny on advertising if they could do without it. But research has shown clear and unmistakable positive relationship between adverting expenses to product and service sales. This is now a fine art in the business world. However, in public health, we still keep wondering about the impact while we should be spending same energy and resources on refining our communication strategies.

An important observation that should not be lost in the shuffle from Inagaki's paper is the too short a time given for communication projects that require demonstrated results. Also, planning of communication projects that must show results should be given extra time and resources for better planning and evaluation. Only outsiders should evaluate projects. Results should be specified from the beginning in clear terms and relate to the entirety of the communication efforts made by the program.

As part of my services, I offer Communication Audit that can inform a donor if the project is on the right track, its strategy is well designed and how likely it is to attain its intended goals, much before the end of term evaluation breaks the news.

Last but not the least, I like to acknowledge and commend Warren Feek for running a very useful service for the communication professional's community. That is a big plus itself. Keep the beat on!

Regards.
Javed S. Ahmad
Health Communication Consultant
New York

On 7/8/08, leelamccullough <drumbeatchat@comminit.com (drumbeatchat@comminit.com)> wrote:

fomi · Joined: 29 Jun 2008 Posts: 1

This is a contribution to the Drum Beat Chat discussion forum. We are currently discussing the issues brought up in Drum Beats 445, 446, and 447, which focus on World Bank Working Paper (#120), "Communicating the Impact of Communication for Development: Recent Trends in Empirical Research" by Nobuya Inagaki. For the opening note of this discussion, please see: http://forums.comminit.com/viewtopic.php?t=104018&style=2 For information on how to participate in or unsubscribe from this forum, and to view the archives of the forum online, please visit the following link: http://forums.comminit.com/viewforum.php?f=49&style=2
===

Colleagues,

There is no thorny issue in a project cycle than measuring change/impact. But who should measure change? When it comes to participatory approaches of impact assessment, traditional paradigms are revisited in favor of inverting the pyramid. The trend over the years has been what AED-SATELLIFE has described: funders asking for numbers of beneficiaries. But is all change described in terms of figures and charts? Without wanting to betray my own bias for qualitative approaches to assessment, I would like to champion the idea that through personal experience working in developing countries, personal stories of both the beneficiaries and implementors of a project have often provided the much needed definitions of what change is when it comes to embracing an intervention. Community involvement in defining how they know that they are making progress has not only been an effective way of gauging change but has also provided an opportunity to reverse the assessment roles. The onus is not only on the project implementor and the donor to determine change and progress, communities too have a say in what they consider to be progress. This is not to throw all caution of quality and adherence to standardized evaluation processes to the dogs but rather that all stakeholders should have a say on what they consider to be indicators for change. Expert opinion only comes in to verify the processes used. So, in short Leela, it could be high time, that project implementors and donors revisited assessment paradigms/approaches if real change can be measured in situations where figures and charts alone cannot do so.

Fletcher Ziwoya
Doctoral Student
School of Communication Studies
Ohio University

rramirez · Joined: 08 Aug 2006 Posts: 11

This is a contribution to the Drum Beat Chat discussion forum. For information on how to participate or unsubscribe to this forum, and to view the discussion forum online, please visit the following link: http://forums.comminit.com/viewforum.php?f=49&style=2
===

For Leela:I find the attached approach particularly relevant in that it maps our short and middle term outcomes while acknowledging that they are contributors to long term impacts.
Have a peek at the diagrams on pages 15 and 16 for a quick overview.
Ricardo

Ricardo Ramirez Communication Consulting
(Adjunct Professor, School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, University of Guelph)
Home office: 44 Caledonia St, Guelph, ON, N1G 2C9 Canada
Tel/Fax +1 519 824-5519
Email: (rramirez@uoguelph.ca)
Skype: ramirezricardo

On 8-Jul-08, at 12:47 PM, leelamccullough wrote:

leelamccullough · Joined: 03 Jul 2008 Posts: 1

This is a contribution to the Drum Beat Chat discussion forum. We are currently discussing the issues brought up in Drum Beats 445, 446, and 447, which focus on World Bank Working Paper (#120), "Communicating the Impact of Communication for Development: Recent Trends in Empirical Research" by Nobuya Inagaki. For the opening note of this discussion, please see: http://forums.comminit.com/viewtopic.php?t=104018&style=2 For information on how to participate in or unsubscribe from this forum, and to view the archives of the forum online, please visit the following link: http://forums.comminit.com/viewforum.php?f=49&style=2
===
Apologies from your moderator - the previous message from Leela McCullough was sent through in error. Below is the message that she sent through today for response from this forum. Sincere apologies to Leela and to the Drum Beat Chat forum for this error in moderation.
===

Dear colleagues,

For more than 15 years, AED-SATELLIFE has been engaged in creating access to, and supporting the exchange of, health information through our e-newsletters and e-forums on crucial health topics. We continue to grapple with the issue of the impact of the information on health providers and health. Numerous organizations are engaged in information dissemination but it is very difficult to measure its impact on health. Quantitative data are hard to come by. Perhaps we need to define impact more broadly since we cannot measure the health outcomes so precisely. In a rigorously controlled study in a specific community, it may be possible to measure, for example, particular malaria outcomes given a specific intervention(s).

Our audience is composed of wide range of health workers: doctors, nurses and midwives, policy makers, pharmacists, medical students, academic faculty, etc. in both low and middle income countries and the industrialised world. To measure the usefulness of the information they access, we tend to focus on the health care provider and try to assess any change in practice, improvement of knowledge base, improvement in skills, examples of use, etc. So far, we have done this through email surveys and when we had some funding we conducted focus groups in one country. And yes, the surveys show that the information is useful, people use it, and it makes a difference in their work. But, funders want to know about the number of lives that are saved or the healthy baby that one can hold at the end of day or the number of people vaccinated.

I would be interested in hearing the experience of others on this list.

Kind regards,
Leela

Warren Feek · Joined: 17 Jun 2005 Posts: 1227

This is a contribution to the Drum Beat Chat discussion forum. For information on how to participate or unsubscribe to this forum, and to view the discussion forum online, please visit the following link:
http://forums.comminit.com/viewforum.php?f=49&style=2
===

My best wishes to everyone.

I wanted to quickly follow up on Deborah's recent note for this Drum Beat
chat which is based around the three recent Drum Beats derived from the
joint World Bank/CI paper ""Communicating the Impact of Communication for
Development: Recent Trends in Empirical Research" by Nobuya Inagaki

Those of us in the Communication and Media Development Field are so often
criticized for not having impact evidence - failing to demonstrate the
impact relationship of a communication/media intervention on a development
issue [from HIV trends to freedom of expression].

Working with The World Bank, we took this initiative to address that issue.
Nobuya was asked to identify recent PEER REVIEWED [and hence legitimate]
journal articles on this theme and to assess, based on that review, the
state of play for the impact of this field. The relevant links follow.

We are very interested in your assessment and response to the knowledge in
Nobuya's paper. Building on Deborah's overall questions [see her previous
email] I would pose these specific questions for response:

- Is this a compelling impact case?

- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the papers/data he has identified
and summarised?

- Is his contextual [eg modernization] and category [eg behaviour change]
approach helpful and accurate?

- Did he miss any important journal articles?

- What does this analysis tell us about where and how we need to strengthen
the impact data to support he claims of our communication/media field?

- Do the data and arguments in this paper [links below] help you to make
your case to policy makers and funders?

Thanks - we look forward to your contributions - Warren

***

LINKS

"Communicating the Impact of Communication for Development: Recent Trends in
Empirical Research" by Nobuya Inagaki:

* The Drum Beat 445 - Background Studies: Trends in Impact Evaluation of C4D
[Part 1] Now archived at http://www.comminit.com/en/drum_beat_445.html
reviews the peer-reviewed articles which served as background evidence for
Mr. Inagaki's analysis.

* The Drum Beat 446 - Trends in Impact Evaluation of C4D [Part 2] Now
archived at http://www.comminit.com/en/drum_beat_446.html focuses on
Chapters 1-4 of the actual analysis, looking at theory, trends, and
evidence.

* The Drum Beat 447 - Trends in Impact Evaluation of C4D [Part 3] Now
archived at http://www.comminit.com/en/drum_beat_447.html focuses on
Chapters 5 and 6, looking at discussion of the trends and evidence and
presenting conclusions.

Warren Feek
Executive Director
The Communication Initiative

1-250-658-6372 - office
1-250-588-8795 - mobile
www.comminit.com