engage, women tend to avoid formal authority and reach out to traditional or religious leaders (66 percent among women compared to 49 among men).<sup>17</sup>

# **2.2 Experimental Design and Data**

The timeline of the study is shown in Figure 1. The information campaign was carried out two weeks prior to the elections (from February 5<sup>th</sup> to 15<sup>th</sup> 2008) by 8 teams consisting of one MRDO female staff and one female enumerator from RCONs each.<sup>18</sup> Each sample village was covered in approximately one day and was divided into contiguous geographical clusters of approximately 40 households. A cluster was typically one or two contiguous streets in the village. Clusters were based on geography rather than other household characteristics such as caste or occupation of household head because restrictions to female mobility suggested that social interactions would be dictated by physical proximity. Each cluster was then randomly assigned to receive the importance of voting message (T1), or T1 plus the secrecy of balloting message (T2) or nothing. The canvassing team selected one cluster in each village at random and began there. T1 was delivered in this cluster. Next, a gap cluster was left between two selected clusters. In the second selected cluster a coin toss determined whether T2 was delivered or all selected households were left as controls. The third selected cluster was then given the opposite treatment of the second cluster. A typical sample village had about 7 study clusters and 11 geographical clusters in all, including gap clusters. The final sample has 67 clusters in total, 30 assigned to T1, 27 assigned to T2 and 10 left as controls.<sup>19</sup> Within each selected cluster, irrespective of the specific treatment, every 4<sup>th</sup> household was selected and surveyed, starting at either end of the cluster. In T1 and T2 clusters, all selected households were assigned to the respective treatment, with the exception of every 5<sup>th</sup> selected household which was left as a

> 17 These statistics are also consistent with Pakistan‘s rather dismal performance on a range of development indicators. According to the 1998 Human Development Report, for example, Pakistan ranked 138 out of 174 on the Human Development Index (HDI), 131 out of 163 on the Gender Development Index (GDI), and 100 out of 102 on the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM).

> 18 While RCONs team members were new in the villages, MRDO staff had been working in the area, although their coverage was still low. According to Table 1, only around 11 percent of the women in the sample were MRDO members. We ensured, however, that MRDO staff did not conduct the campaign in the villages where they had been working previously. MRDO staff was also not engaged in the collection of the follow-up data. When asked informally about whether women in the household they had visited to deliver the campaign had voted and for whom, they did not know. As a result, it is clear that MRDO staff did not have any authority over the household and there was no expectation that they would obtain future favors if they casted the vote.

> 19 We kept one randomly selected control cluster in the survey sample per village. In one larger village, two control clusters were included in the survey.

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