Take a moment to think about the adult women Take a moment to think about all the people where you live. These could include your family where you live. These could include your family members, friends, neighbors, and others. Out of 10 members, friends, neighbors, and others. Out of such women, how many work outside their home? ten such people how many would think or speak badly about married women who, because of work, return home after 5pm in the evening?

_For women only:_ Think now for a moment about your husband/ father/ brother, and his views Does he think or speak badly about women who work outside their homes?

To examine the cultural mental models and “schemata,” respondents were asked to record open-ended questions inspired by classical accounts of how narratives shape behavior (Bruner, 1990; Crossley, 2002; Sarbin, 1986). Each respondent was asked a random set of narrative questions that explored their views of how typical or atypical they perceived themselves or their relationship with a specified male or female relative to be, how they explained their or their spouse’s motivation to work to others, how they talked to others about work related decisions, and why they thought education is important for women’s future.

The draft quantitative survey was field tested to determine how effectively the questions elicited social norms and beliefs, improve the language and instructions provided to enumerators on questions, and refine guidance to enumerators on how to elicit informative but concise narratives from respondents. The pre-test was conducted with 50 households in Amman and included households where both the husband and wife were interviewed. The purpose of interviewing both spouses within a given household was to test the feasibility of interviewing couples in a household separately.

Some variables explored during the pre-test were excluded in the final questionnaire. An implicit attitude test (IAT) was designed but excluded once it became clear that FLFP in Jordan is likely driven by explicit rather than implicit views and because the IAT proved costly to administer. A series of vignettes to examine the conditionality of FLFP preferences were designed but excluded once the number of circumstances, contingencies, and conditions to the social norms around FLFP became evident (e.g., visibility of women’s work, family circumstances, age of children, gender mixing at work, work hours).

In addition, the pre-test helped refine the reference group, which is theoretically crucial in the link between social norms and behavior. Respondents did not appear to know about FLFP in Jordan as a whole, and the questions about social norms in the neighborhood or community appeared to be variously and inconsistently interpreted in the peri-urban settings. The final questionnaire instead asked about social norms “where you live,” in order to cue the respondents’ own sense of place. This flexibility was preferred, we believe, because the actual reference group varied, and it allowed individuals to imagine the group that mattered to them. We avoided further clarification questions regarding reference groups so that the reference group “priming” remained consistent across respondents.

In measuring sensitive beliefs and social norms, it was important to be wary of social desirability bias- the tendency of respondents to answer questions in a way that is “appropriate” or “correct”, rather than a true reflection of their beliefs. In our case, respondents might guess that the enumerators would prefer to hear answers that support women’s economic empowerment. Or perhaps respondents have an internalized 8