Edutainment and the prevention of under-age marriages: The evaluation of a television series designed to promote positive role models in Bangladesh

• Published in: Journal of development effectiveness 2024-04, Vol.16 (2), p.159-186
• Main Authors: Islam, Muhammed Nazmul, Rabbani, Atonu, Talukder, Animesh, Siddiqua, Rubaiya Riya, Nujhat, Sanjana, Rahman, Mushfiqur, Roy, Antara, Sarker, Malabika
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Child marriage; edutainment intervention; random encouragement design
• ISSN: 1943-9342; 1943-9407
• DOI: 10.1080/19439342.2023.2195851

Edutainment intervention is a popular and inexpensive behavioural change communication toolkit to raise positive social norms through broadcast media. We evaluated a 26-episode nationally broadcasted television series targeted to improve attitudes towards preventing child marriage in Bangladesh. We applied a randomised encouragement design to motivate our subjects to watch the series, addressing their self-selection issues concerning viewership. We randomly assigned a sample of 1,162 households into three arms: (T1) received weekly SMS reminders, (T2) received weekly SMSs and telephone calls, and (C) pure control. We followed up with 1,096 households, collected information on viewership and self-reported attitudes, and conducted a dictator game experiment to understand their revealed attitudes towards child marriage. We found considerable variations in viewership across the arms, suggesting associations with reminder intensity. Compared to the average control group viewership of about 0.15 episodes (SD = 0.82), T2 generated a difference of about 1.50-1.93 episodes (P