Written by: Allison Ralph and Michelle Garred
Michelle Garred, PhD, Founder of Ripple Peace Research & Consulting has partnered with Cohesion Strategy to offer enhanced measuring and evaluation services! Get in touch to learn more.
Over the last couple of months, I, Allison, have written a couple of short pieces on the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of light-touch bridging strategies referencing data showing that the impacts of light-touch bridging strategies often differ from expectations by inspiring less positive change in feeling than hoped. At the same time, I also have a feeling they probably inspire a small number of people to very great changes in feeling and action.
It was somewhat unfair of me, I suppose, to label a great many different approaches as “bridgebuilding” and then attack the whole. So I wanted to clarify that by light-touch bridgebuilding I meant approaches that focus on reducing ill-feeling across difference without directly seeking specific changes in action. Underlying those approaches is the social science theory called “contact theory,” which argues that positive “contact between individuals who belong to different groups can foster the development of more positive out-group attitudes” and presumably a reduction in aggressive behaviors.
As I argued in my earlier blogs, the common focus in the bridgebuilding and pro-democracy space in the US on attitude change alone is problematic for several reasons. Instead, we (practitioners, funders, and evaluators) should be giving equal attention to behavior change as a necessary pathway to social change. So I reached out to my friend and evaluation colleague Michelle Garred, PhD, head of Ripple Peace Research & Consulting and deep expert on understanding behavior (and attitude!) change in dynamic and complex social change situations around the world. I’ve asked her to co-author this blog series with me to:
Explore approaches for evaluating behavior change,
Understand the underlying social science theory, and
Look at some effectiveness tools from the conflict sensitivity and peacebuilding spaces, developed internationally and highly applicable in US contexts.
Michelle and I will begin in this first blog to look at why and how to focus on behavior change directly in evaluation (and possibly applied research) of bridgebuilding initiatives that aim primarily to reduce ill-feeling across difference.
Why focus on behavior change?
I, Michelle, would offer that there are two big reasons for including a focus on behavior change when evaluating bridgebuilding. Let’s unpack those reasons.
First, there is no social change without behavior change. That’s a big statement but, if you think about it, I believe you’ll agree. Can you think of any past example of social change that was not caused by a shift in behavior? Neither can I. Of course, behaviors come in many different forms, ranging from our daily micro-habits to the policies that we make through our collective institutions. But I have never discovered an example of social change without behavior change, and I’m confident that you haven’t either.
This does not mean that attitudes are unimportant! On the contrary, our internal attitudes and mindsets are obviously powerful shapers of our external behavior. This is why I am known for advocating that attitude change be considered in evaluation. Nonetheless, the reality is that there is no direct step from attitude change to social change. Attitude change must manifest itself through behavior change before social change can happen.
The pathway to social change. Garred with Ma 2024.
Unfortunately, attitude change does not always manifest itself through behavior change. The strength of attitude change’s influence can vary, and sometimes it has no effect on behavior. This challenge has given rise to a significant sub-field of social psychology devoted to researching how and under what conditions attitudes influence behaviors.
Among many other things, social psychologists have discovered that:
The influence of attitude change on behavior change is stronger when the attitude and behavior occur within the same social context.
Gaps in ability or opportunity can block attitude changes from leading to behavior changes.
People who enjoy social privilege sometimes demonstrate a gap between their ethical principles (attitudes) and their real-life behaviors.
These findings are merely a sample of a vast body of research, which affirms that attitude change is important while also warning us not to assume that shifts in attitude lead automatically to changes in behavior. If we want to explore the effectiveness of bridgebuilding, attitude change data is not enough. We must make behavior change data a priority within our evaluation approaches.
Second, behavior change is credible evidence. Attitude change data adds value when it is collected and analyzed well. Yet this is not easy because attitude change can be challenging to measure. It requires individuals to self-report their experience in ways that are often vulnerable to social desirability bias, because we humans are prone to telling evaluators what they want to hear. An attitude change cannot be seen or observed, so it cannot be objectively verified (though it can be triangulated through comparison to other data points). Credible attitude change data can require expert-level skills, which is out of reach for some small bridgebuilding projects.
Behavior change, on the other hand, is directly observable, so it can be verified. Verified behavior changes are typically understood to be credible, robust data. This is why courts of law value eyewitness testimonies, especially when multiple testimonies align. This is also why many of the skills required to collect behavior change data are accessible for non-experts to learn with some training and practice.
To evaluate the effectiveness of bridgebuilding, the ideal is a combined approach that tracks both behavior changes and attitude changes, and their relationships to each other. A self-reported attitude change gains a lot of credibility and meaning when linked to a verified change in behavior! Similarly, behavior change data becomes more useful when accompanied by attitude data that explains why the behavior change happened. With that said, where it’s not possible to look at both attitudes and behaviors together, Allison and I would recommend opting for a focus on behavior change data.
How to focus on behavior change?
In collecting behavior change data, the most common approach is to pre-identify the behavior changes that we are expecting and then collect data on those particular types of change. For example, a bridgebuilding project might choose to track what proportion of its diverse participants begin to use different words when they speak about each other or hold voluntary meetings with people of other backgrounds. If we are confident that we know what behavior changes to look for, this approach can be an excellent one.
But what if we don’t know what kinds of behavior changes to look for? What if a narrow focus on pre-defined indicators risks missing other significant changes that may occur? This is a challenge in complex and tough-to-forecast contexts like today’s USA. The same challenge applies to bridgebuilding projects, which often seek to unleash far-reaching change by motivating and equipping participants to take the initiative and chart their own courses of action. When project participants actually do so, the resulting behavior changes become unpredictable, and it becomes necessary to apply a wide lens when looking for emergent change.
One of the most compelling approaches to tracking emergent behavior change is Outcome Harvesting (OH), originally developed by Ricardo Wilson-Grau. Unlike traditional approaches, OH does not rely on the advance prediction of specific changes. Instead, it uses retrospective logic to identify the significant real-life behavior changes that are being observed on the ground and then works backward to capture and verify the change that took place. This is a mainly qualitative approach, yet it supports quantitative techniques when analyzing patterns in the data.
OH outcomes are observable changes in the behavior of individuals, groups, organizations, or institutions toward which the project in question has made a significant contribution. As described by colleagues at Saferworld, an outcome is something that others do in a new or different way as a result of your work. Those outcomes may be small or large, direct or indirect, intended or unintended, opening up powerful new ways of understanding how communities and systems change.
At this point, you may wonder: “Outcome Harvesting sounds like a really intriguing way to track behavior change! But does it totally ignore attitude change?” Well, yes, it does. OH, in its original form, looks only at behavior, which is a limitation when evaluating bridgebuilding. That’s why my firm Ripple Peace Research & Consulting has led the development of an adapted version called Outcome Harvesting + Attitude Change. This adaptation retains the behavior-centered definition of an outcome while integrating attitude change as an additional component within the data set. It enables us to credibly demonstrate what has changed while also better understanding why and how.
All in all, we want to inspire you to consider a focus on behavior change when exploring the effectiveness of bridgebuilding! Whether you try Outcome Harvesting or pursue a different approach, we hope you’ll give behavior change a try. We’d love to hear about your experiences. Feel free to reach out for further conversation.
Michelle Garred, PhD, is a guest author this week and is the Founder and Principal at Ripple Peace Research & Consulting LLC, which provides program design, program evaluation and practical research services to organizations working to improve intergroup relations across cultural, religious, racial, ethnic and other lines of difference.
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