Preventing Early Child Marriage in Nepal
Condition: Child Marriage
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      This project evaluates an intervention designed to prevent early child marriage in Nepal. The
      intervention consists of community dialogues, activist trainings, and community organized
      activities aimed at transforming social norms around gender. There will be three groups
      within the study: one exposed to the full program, one exposed to a lighter version of the
      program, and one that has not been exposed to the program. The impact evaluation will consist
      of qualitative and quantitative methods that compare these three groups.
    

Detailed description: 
      Each year, child marriage, before age 18 years, affects more than 10 million girls globally.
      The practice is associated with adverse maternal and child health outcomes and diminished
      long-term economic empowerment. About half of all child marriages occur in South Asia. A
      recent study in four high prevalence South Asian countries showed declines in girl-child
      marriage from 1991-1994 to 2005-2007, however, these declines were concentrated in the
      youngest ages. Namely, significant relative reductions occurred in the marriage of girls
      before age 14 years in all countries, however, little or no change was seen in the marriage
      of 16- to 17-year-old girls for any country except Bangladesh, where the prevalence of such
      marriages increased.

      Tipping Point (TP) is an innovative program developed by Cooperative for Assistance and
      Relief Everywhere, Inc. (CARE) to change community social norms and build capacity among
      adolescent girls to become agents of change in their communities, with the ultimate goal of
      reducing the risk of child marriage.

      The quantitative evaluation of the TP package will involve a three arm Cluster Randomized
      Controlled Trial (CRCT), where the arms are as follows:

        -  Arm 1: Full TP intervention including emphasized social norms change

        -  Arm 2: Light TP intervention without emphasized social norms change

        -  Arm 3: Pure control

      The overall evaluation in Nepal will start with the baseline study, followed by eighteen
      months of interventions. After the intervention phase, there will be a one year 'freeze'
      period, when no interventions will take place. After that one year, the end-line evaluation
      study will be conducted in Nepal to assess the impact of the packages.
    

Intervention name(s): Full TP intervention; Light TP intervention
Intervention type(s): Behavioral; Behavioral
Intervention description(s): CARE's Tipping Point initiative focuses on addressing the root causes of child, early, and forced marriage (CEFM) and promoting the rights of adolescent girls through community-level programming and evidence generation in Nepal and Bangladesh, as well as multi-level advocacy and cross-learning efforts across the globe. Tipping Point's approach focuses on synchronized engagement with different participant groups-including adolescent girls, adolescent boys, parents/community members, community leaders-around key programmatic pillars, and creates public spaces for all community members to engage in the dialogue. Tipping Point's approach relies on challenging social expectations and repressive gender norms and promoting girl-centric and girl-led activism to enable adolescent girls to identify and move into social spaces where they can challenge inequality.; The Tipping Point project also has designed a social norms light package, which includes a subset of the social norms and activism components of the full package.
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Intervention model description: Wards (the lowest government administrative units in Nepal) will be treated as clusters or the primary sampling units in this study. Each cluster will be randomly assigned to one of the three arms. Adolescents residing in the study wards will be recruited.
Masking: None (Open Label)
Primary purpose: Prevention
Keywords: Social research