Browsing by Author "Green, Donald P"

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    Countering Violence Against Women by Encouraging Disclosure: A Mass Media Experiment in Rural Uganda
    (SAGE Publications, 2020-12) Green, Donald P; Wilke, Anna M; Cooper, Jasper
    Abstract Violence against women (VAW) is widespread in East Africa, with almost half of married women experiencing physical abuse. Those seeking to address this issue confront two challenges: some forms of domestic violence are widely condoned and it is the norm for witnesses to not report incidents. Building on a growing literature showing that education-entertainment can change norms and behaviors, we present experimental evidence from a media campaign attended by more than 10,000 Ugandans in 112 rural villages. In randomly assigned villages, video dramatizations discouraged VAW and encouraged reporting. Results from interviews conducted several months after the intervention show no change in attitudes condoning VAW yet a substantial increase in willingness to report to authorities, especially among women, and a decline in the share of women who experienced violence. The theoretical implication is that interventions that affect disclosure norms may reduce socially harmful behavior even if they do not reduce its acceptability.
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    Encouraging Community Action Against Teacher Absenteeism: A Mass Media Experiment in Rural Uganda
    (Routledge, 2022-05) Wilke, Anna M; Green, Donald P; Tan, Benjamin
    Abstract Chronic teacher absenteeism is widespread in Uganda, with approximately one-third of public school teachers absent on any given day. Absenteeism and other problems that arise in Uganda's public education system are often attributed to a lack of public oversight and parental involvement. In an effort to develop a scalable method of encouraging community engagement on this issue, the present study assesses the extent to which entertainment-education videos increase willingness among Ugandans to take action against absenteeism. Working in collaboration with Ugandan screenwriters and local actors, we developed video dramatisations that depicted the problem of absenteeism and how parents mobilised to address it. We assess the persuasive effects of these dramatisations both under lab-like conditions, to gauge immediate effects, and in the field, to gauge effects two months and eight months after a placebo-controlled media campaign attended by over 10,000 Ugandans in 112 villages. Although the persuasive effects are weaker in the field than the lab setting, the former remain substantial even after eight months. The demonstrated ability of entertainment-education to change public views on this issue sets the stage for policy experiments that test whether entertainment-education campaigns have downstream effects on absenteeism and public school performance more generally.