{"id":377,"date":"2021-04-01T15:28:29","date_gmt":"2021-04-01T15:28:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s42\/?p=377"},"modified":"2021-10-18T13:03:42","modified_gmt":"2021-10-18T13:03:42","slug":"self-efficacy-and-citizen-engagement-in-development-experimental-evidence-from-tanzania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s42\/2021\/04\/01\/self-efficacy-and-citizen-engagement-in-development-experimental-evidence-from-tanzania\/","title":{"rendered":"Self-Efficacy and Citizen Engagement in Development: Experimental Evidence from Tanzania"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Evan Lieberman <\/em>and Yang-Yang Zhou<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many deeply rooted economic and political factors contribute to the persistence of extreme inequalities around the world. Across the low- and middle-income countries, policies designed to promote human welfare often fail to translate into better development outcomes. For example, following the extension of universal free primary education across several East African countries, learning outcomes continue to fall short of expectations<\/a>. Elites captured resources for their own use and government bureaucrats under-performed without penalty. A popular development paradigm, \u201cthe short route of accountability<\/a>\u201d posits that as the beneficiaries of public services, citizens are well positioned to monitor providers and take action. And yet, particularly in poor contexts, there are low levels of citizen engagement<\/a>. Many scholars have pointed to \u201cinformation asymmetries\u201d as the main bottleneck, but interventions that give more information<\/em> still often fail to change behaviors. In this research we consider the important role that beliefs<\/em> might play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Specifically, we consider beliefs about self-efficacy. Wealthy individuals tend to have a relatively high sense of self-efficacy <\/em>\u2013 that is, they believe that their voices will be heard, and that their recommendations will be acted upon. On the other hand, low-income individuals with less formal education often lack such beliefs, and thus they don\u2019t act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such dynamics contribute to what we call an \u201cEfficacy Trap\u201d in development (see figure 1). It is a \u201ctrap\u201d because the dynamics are self-reinforcing: The affluent are likely to believe they are efficacious in large part because they have enjoyed lifetimes of mastery experiences and validation during their educational and occupational careers. And if they take political action, engage government officials, and in turn, get more of what they want, their sense of self-efficacy tends to be further enhanced. For the poor, it is just the opposite. As children, they tend to attend larger and more crowded schools and\/or face lower status or no work opportunities. In such contexts, they are much less likely to have had the experiences or the types of feedback that would generate a sense of self-efficacy. And even in the context of formal citizenship rights, they may be less prepared to exercise those rights out of fear that no one will listen. In turn, their wants may be less visible to political representatives, and they are less likely to get what they need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Is there a way out of the efficacy trap? Of course, government policies to provide the poor better education and better work opportunities are key, but those outcomes may be politically difficult to attain in the absence of active citizen participation and engagement. Alternatively, can a short-term intervention boost self-efficacy beliefs for poor citizens enough so that they enter a new equilibrium where they feel empowered to take the risks of participating in politics for better development outcomes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

With our partner organization <\/a>Twaweza<\/a>, an East African initiative dedicated to promoting citizen engagement, we designed a meeting-based intervention, Validated Participation (VP) that gives citizens opportunities to practice successful engagement. Citizens — in our case parents of primary school children in Tanzania — were provided deliberate opportunities to participate in critical discussions and decision-making in their children\u2019s schools, and their ideas and actions were socially validated by an authority figure and by one other. These exercises included deliberating and voting on how to spend small grants for the school (e.g. on science posters vs. on maps), a discussion of school needs, and collectively generating a list of actions that parents could undertake to help improve their children\u2019s learning. As a way to warm up and generate inclusive discussions, our facilitators displayed a piece of visual art<\/a> and encouraged parents to tell a story about the artwork (see figure 2).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We ran two studies, one at the school-level and the other at the individual-level, selecting underperforming schools in two regions of Tanzania. First, we observationally confirmed that parents\u2019 self-efficacy beliefs are positively correlated with their behaviors and intentions that would benefit the school and their children. These beliefs even predicted their children\u2019s test scores. Next, we experimentally compared VP to an information only treatment and a control group. At endline, although VP generally had positive effects on efficacy and certain active citizenship behaviors, we did not observe a difference compared to a standard informational treatment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nonetheless, we found promising evidence for VP in a follow-up qualitative study conducted with teachers (who were unaware of their school\u2019s treatment status) two years after the intervention. It is possible that treatment effects and seeing the full change from efficacy trap to virtuous cycle takes time. Future research should include larger-scale and longer-term studies conducted in other contexts. While our focus was on citizen engagement in underperforming public schools in Tanzania, we believe that our questions and theory likely speak to problems of poverty and inequality around the world, including in the U.S. For practitioners and scholars who are interested in measuring self-efficacy and\/or implementing VP, our intervention protocol offers several clear, inexpensive, and easily adapted steps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Go to full article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Evan Lieberman and Yang-Yang Zhou Many deeply rooted economic and political factors contribute to the persistence of extreme inequalities around the world. Across the low- and middle-income countries, policies designed to promote human welfare often fail to translate into better development outcomes. For example, following the extension of universal free primary education across several East … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25307,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jeps-blogs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s42\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s42\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s42\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s42\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25307"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s42\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s42\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s42\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s42\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connect.apsanet.org\/s42\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}