Educational narratives

High quality information is critical to good household decision-making and households in socially isolated communities often must make consequential decisions without adequate information. It is unclear, however, what the best methods are for disseminating information to socially isolated households. On the one hand, objective information delivered by experts may be easy to understand and authoritative. This suggests that short and simple public service announcements may be more effective. On the other hand, concrete examples may be easier for households to engage with and more closely connect to how people think about their day to day lives. This suggests that narrative or story-based approaches may be more effective. This experiment will test how communicating advice to rural Malawian parents/ guardians about supporting their daughters’ education affects those parents’ beliefs, behaviours, and attitudes. Parents/ guardians will be randomly assigned to either view a Public Service Announcement (PSA) from an expert, to view a story about parents struggling to manage their daughter’s behaviour, or to a control condition. They will then be invited to choose tickets for a lottery for educational scholarships for their children and asked questions about their beliefs and attitudes. We will test how the information they receive affects their lottery choices, their parental self-efficacy, and their attitudes toward parenting styles.