Adolescent Education

What norms contribute to this behavior?

Social norms are the perceived, informal rules that define acceptable, appropriate, and obligatory actions within a given group or community. Some social norms are specific to a particular context, while others may be broad enough to span multiple contexts; even seemingly contradictory norms may exist in the same context.1

The following examples represent social norms relevant to adolescent education (ages 10-18) that emerged from across the literature. They are not meant to be a comprehensive list of all relevant social norms or norms relevant in all contexts. 

  • For boys and girls, educational attendance and attainment is strongly associated with more equitable gender attitudes. Girls with more educational attainment, particularly secondary or higher, are more likely to have more gender equitable attitudes than girls with less education.2–7
    Meta-Norms: Gender Ideology; Social Status
  • Beliefs that menstruation is unclean, impure, or unnatural, lead to feelings of embarrassment, fear, and shame for adolescent girls.8–11 Many girls fear stigma or teasing and cope by staying home from school during their menstrual period.8,9,11–13 The ability of girls to attend school during menstruation may also be limited by cultural beliefs, or self-imposed isolation as concealment.4,7–9,11
    Meta-Norms: Control and Violence; Gender Ideology; Privacy; Social Status
  • Inequitable gender norms and roles within families place a disproportionate burden of household chores and duties on girls; this leads to reduced access to and time for educational and economic power and opportunities.3,4,6,14–21 Prioritization of girls’ education and equitable division of household tasks between family members can support girls’ educational attainment.4,17 [
    Meta-Norms: Authority; Control and Violence; Gender Ideology; Social Status
  • Son preference is supported by norms that prioritize boys’ wellbeing and opportunity, including their educational pursuits, due to their role in livelihood security.12,15,17,20 Education for women and girls is devalued due to their presumed lack of career options, and the assumption that women are supposed to do household labor.4,15,17,22
    Meta-Norms: Authority; Control and Violence; Gender Ideology; Social Status
  • Social expectations related to early marriage and pregnancy can lead adolescent girls to drop-out of school.4,7,20,22–25 Postponing sexual debut, early marriage and pregnancy and receiving encouragement in school can support girls’ educational achievement.7,14,22–24 
    Meta-Norms: Authority; Control and Violence; Protection; Social Status
  • Absenteeism and dropout for boys and girls occurs more often in areas where school-based corporal punishment and discrimination is common; when violence at home and/or at school decreases, school attendance rates increase.3,23,26,27 When teachers create supportive environments at school, girls stay in school longer and families and girls postpone marriage.22,26,28
    Meta-Norms: Authority; Control and Violence; Gender Ideology; Protection
  • Gender attitudes and norms often tie a girl’s value in marriage to her ‘purity’ and virginity. To secure a favorable marriage match, parents and families may limit a girl’s mobility in the community, including access to school to prevent ‘eve teasing’ (sexual harassment) and consensual adolescent romantic and sexual relationships.4,7,14,23,29,30
    Meta-Norms: Authority; Control and Violence; Gender Ideology; Social Status
  • Girls are more likely to continue their education when parents and families are supportive.4,26 Norms can be protective of girls’ education, such as when education will improve a girl’s marital prospects,22 her future role as a mother and educator to her children,22 and her career and economic prospects.4,26 Additionally, if education is believed to be a human right, families are more supportive of girls’ education.22
    Meta-Norms: Gender Ideology; Protection; Social Status
  • Girls are considered more vulnerable than boys to gender-based violence outside the home, as such, their mobility is limited to protect them from violence.14,30 When girls have increased mobility and safety, they achieve increased education and vocational skills, which in turn leads to greater caregiver support for girls’ mobility.4,14,30,31
    Meta-Norms: Authority; Control and Violence; Gender Ideology; Protection; Social Status

What other factors affect this behavior?

Other non-normative factors within and outside of the family influence educational access, participation and achievement among both boys and girls. As parents are often the primary decision-makers regarding their children’s education, parental characteristics play an important role.  Additional examples are below:

Individual

Interpersonal

  • Parents’ socio-demographic characteristics, such as age at marriage or educational attainment2,3,12,15
  • Supportive Adults, such as family members, teachers and mentors2,5,9–11
  • Witnessing Violence (including sexual violence, family violence, school violence, and community-based violence)3,17,18

Community

Who influences this behavior?

Family, community members, and teachers are key supports (or barriers) for girls in their pursuit of education. This is also the case for boys, though community expectations may differ for boys and girls. Communities and social norms influence whether parents are supportive of the aspirations of girls for education, careers and other goals.

What interventions were implemented to address norms and improve behavior?

  • The Samata intervention was implemented as part of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s STRIVE consortium in Karnataka state, India from 2014-2017. This multi-level intervention was designed to address barriers that prevent girls from staying in school and delaying marriage, including gender norms that devalue girls’ education leading to removing daughters from school early, arranging earlier marriages and/or dedicating them as sex workers as part of a cultural religious tradition in this setting. A theory of change was developed which posited that poverty, gender norms, poor accountability of schools and communities, and poor education, perpetuate traditions of underage marriage and sex work. This in turn heightens vulnerability to HIV infection and diminishes the quality of life for adolescent girls from scheduled castes and tribes (SC/ST) girls in rural northern Karnataka. Intervention components included establishing safe spaces for girls to meet, academic tutoring for girls, forming boys’ groups to discuss girls’ rights, engaging parents to value education and rethink norms around early marriage, linking intervention families to government incentives for girls schooling and sensitizing schools to the value of girls’ education and safety. The intervention was evaluated by a cluster-randomized control trial with parallel assignment, using a mixed-method approach, baseline and endline quantitative surveys and a longitudinal qualitative study.  Results showed that family-level norms related to education, marriage, eve teasing (sexual harassment), and girls’ mobility were strongly associated with marriage and education outcomes among 15–16-year-old adolescent girls in this setting. However, they found no difference between rates of school dropout and early marriage for girls in the control and intervention groups. Qualitative data from the intervention’s evaluation found that educational outcomes improved when parents were supportive of girls’ educational aspirations. Girls’ agency impacted their educational outcomes; girls with more agency also had supportive families and less constraining influences on their agency. Quantitative analysis found high rates of positive outcomes, including girls completing or passing secondary school and delaying marriage, sexual debut or cohabitation with husband; however there were not significant differences between control and intervention groups. At the time of the study and intervention, there were concurrent government programs at the state and national level to improve educational outcomes and decrease child marriage, which may have contributed to the improvements to outcomes throughout the entire population (control and intervention).1–4
  • The Choices, Voices and Promises interventions were implemented by Save the Children in the rural Kapilvastu District in Nepal in 2015. This multi-level gender transformative intervention includes three specific approaches for VYAs (Choices), their families (Voices) and their communities (Promises). Choices consisted of nine sessions of curriculum-based activities implemented by trained older adolescent facilitators directly with VYAs to address gender inequity, social norms, power and social status. Voices consisted of six 10-minute videos including testimonials based on six behaviors related to gender equality in very young adolescents such as delayed marriage, and equitable division of household labor, and facilitated group discussions. Promises included the public display of large posters designed to spark conversations about gender equity within the community, publicly revealed by volunteer community influencers and a culminating community celebration. An evaluation study compared two communities receiving the Choices, Voices and Promises package (individual, family and community-level) and two communities receiving only Choices (individual-level only).  For individuals, norms, attitudes and behaviors were measured across three domains: gender equity in education; gender equity in household chores and resource sharing; and gender equity in aspirations for girls and boys. For parents, norms, attitudes and behaviors were measured among one domain; delaying marriage for girls. Most measures of gender norms, attitudes, and behaviors improved in all communities, suggesting a positive effect of the Choices intervention. For example, rates of disagreement among participants with the statement, “It is more important for a girl to help at home and learn household activities than to spend time studying” increased 2.9-fold from baseline to endline. Increases in positive norms, attitudes, and behaviors reported by VYAs were generally greater in the full Choices, Voices and Promises intervention areas compared to Choices-only areas, suggesting an added benefit from the Voices and Promises interventions. Inconsistent evaluation results, particularly among parents, may reflect implementation challenges such as the compressed 3-month implementation period due to the 2015 earthquakes and subsequent political unrest.5

This web feature was written by the Institute for Reproductive Health with volunteer experts through the YouthPower2 Learning and Evaluation Gender Community of Practice. Additional content review was provided by colleagues at IRH and UCSD.

This web feature was created by Karin Smith and Anneka Van Scoyoc of the Population Reference Bureau. Charlotte Greenbaum, Raquel Wojnar, and Rachel Yavinsky, all of PRB, provided review.

© Institute for Reproductive Health 2022. All Rights Reserved.

Institute for Reproductive Health
Georgetown University

irhinfo@georgetown.edu
202-687-1392

Back to top

About Passages

About the Behavior Studies

The Passages Project is a USAID-funded seven-year implementation research project that aims to address a broad range of social norms, at scale, to achieve sustained improvements in family planning (FP), reproductive health (RH), and gender-based violence. Passages seeks to build an evidence base and contribute to the capacity of the global community to strengthen normative environments that support RH and well-being, especially among young people at key life stages transition points, including young adolescents, newly married couples, and first-time parents. As part of this effort, the Passages Project conducted a scoping review of evidence related to social norms affecting adolescents and young adults in low- and middle-income countries.

To conduct the scoping review, Passages Project consortium members first developed consensus around a list of priority behaviors for each of three age groupings: very young adolescents (VYA; 10-14 years); older adolescents (OA; 15-18 years); and young adults (19-25 years). For each of these groups, consortium members outlined behaviors from three broad thematic areas: 1) RH and FP, focusing on puberty for VYA and voluntary use of contraception for OA and young adults; 2) primary and secondary education for VYA and OA; and 3) family violence, focusing on child marriage for VYA and OA, and intimate partner violence for OA and young adults. Experts on adolescent social and behavior change (SBC) were engaged to rank priority behaviors based on criteria including current evidence gaps, their importance to thematic area outcomes, and promise for norms-shifting approaches.

This process resulted in seven priority behavior-age group combinations that were subsequently re-organized in five behavior studies, with some age groupings combined due to lack of specific evidence or lack of disaggregation compatible with Passages’ original groupings. These five behavior studies are:

  • Adolescent education: Ages 10-25; includes very young adolescents, older adolescents and young adults; a majority of the available evidence focused on adolescent girls and young women.
  • Puberty among very young adolescents: Ages 10-14.
  • Voluntary use of contraception among older adolescents and young adults: Ages 15-25; includes groups of young adults such as first-time parents and newly married couples.
  • Intimate partner violence among older adolescents and young adults: Ages 15-25; includes groups of young adults such as first-time parents and newly married couples.
  • Child marriage among very young adolescents and older adolescents: Ages 10-18; includes very young adolescents and older adolescents; a majority of the available evidence focused on very young adolescent girls.

Scoping reviews were conducted for each priority behavior/age grouping combination. This phase reviewed four databases (PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, and PsycINFO) of peer-reviewed literature focusing on literature from 2010 – 2021. Over 5,000 studies were screened, of which 521 met the inclusion criteria in at least one priority behavior/age grouping. After further evaluating each study that met the initial inclusion criteria, Passages selected studies that:

  1. Investigated the influence of specific social norms on the priority behavior and age groupings, and/or how these norms are held in place; and/or
  2. Described or evaluated promising approaches to address or shift these social norms for a given behavior and age grouping.

The resulting literature base for each behavior study was analyzed by Passages project staff and volunteers with expertise in SBC programming for adolescents and young people. Each behavior studies include information on:

  • Social norms relevant to the behavior that emerged from across the literature for the age grouping. These are ‘tagged’ by the identified underlying meta-norms they reflect, using terminology from the Learning Collaborative’s Social Norms Atlas and Passages’ Social Norms Lexicon.
  • Other, non-normative variances that affect the behavior or practice within the age grouping.
  • Influential reference groups. In reporting findings, there are differences in the specificity of naming these influential groups (i.e., religious leaders versus communities at large) that directly reflect the literature.
  • Two selected relevant interventions that described addressing norms related to the priority behavior for the age grouping, or contained a norms-shifting component, regardless of rigorous measurement of this norms-shifting component. Each selected intervention is ‘tagged’ with the identified norms-shifting approaches in their programming, using terminology from the Passages Theory of Change).

 

Literature Gaps

The majority of published literature focuses on investigating the influence of social norms on target behaviors, often finding a strong influence of gender and other social norms on target behaviors. However, many of these studies did not disaggregate or analyze data by age or gender.

It is therefore challenging to understand either the influence of norms on the behaviors and practices of and for young people or how these norms may be shifted– and especially for different and distinct stages of youth. Adolescence, marriage, and first pregnancy are key transitional phases in the life course in which norms are likely different; it is thus vital to disaggregate findings by age or life stage and gender. Few of the studies measured norms rigorously, and many used attitudes as a proxy for norms. For example, many studies used the Gender-Equitable Men (GEM) scale to measure norms, although the scale measures individual attitudes rather than social expectations.

Only a few of the studies reviewed included a definition of social or gender norms, discussed formative work to identify existing norms, or outlined a named framework or their program theory of change. Social norms were conceived in various manners and according to various disciplines, and were not always consistent with the Passages Project’s definition of social norms as “what I think people do and what I think people should or should not do in my community.” It was not common for studies to report the boundaries of the communities (for example, ‘parents of very young adolescents within X region,’ rather than just ‘parents’) within which norms, or proxies, where measured. Nor was it common for studies to explicitly identify reference groups (see the Passages Social Norms Lexicon for full definitions).

Most of the interventions included in the review were multi-component interventions, of which norms-shifting activities were often only a small component of the overall activities. Very few studies evaluated the effect of norms-shifting interventions on target behaviors, and fewer still measured norms or norm changes over time.  Asa a result, it is challenging to attribute behavioral changes to norms-shifting activities. More work is needed to evaluate norms-shifting interventions using valid and reliable social norms measures, measuring norm shifting against a comparison group to better understand the added effect of norms-shifting activities on norms and behaviors.

All said, the review affirmed that promising practices to address youth behavior across these three domains exist. We believe that it is possible, feasible, and important to design and evaluate norms-shifting interventions for adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health behaviors based on understood and accepted definitions, strong formative work to identify norms and meta-norms, and outlining the communities, influencers, and pathways through which norms impact behaviors.