Prevalence of Barriers to Change

This essential indicator measures the extent to which people experience an identified barrier to adopting a promoted behaviour. Comparing the proportion of people who experience different barriers can help you focus on the most prevalent barriers and in doing so achieve a greater impact.

Determine the indicator's value using the following methodology:

1) Use findings of formative research or any other evidence to define a barrier (to practicing a specific behaviour) whose prevalence you want to measure. Barriers can include:

   - lacking resources, such as money, water, seeds or time

   - disapproval of a family member

   - limited confidence in the behaviour’s effectiveness

   - lacking knowledge / skills

   - perception that it is difficult to practice the behaviour

   - perception that practicing the behaviour has negative consequences

It is very important that the barrier is defined based on evidence, not assumptions.

2) Prepare interview question(s) assessing whether a respondent faces the given barrier. You might be able to take advantage of the guidance provided on the IndiKit website, especially when measuring people’s knowledge / skills, supportive attitudes, perceived approval, perceived ease of practice, or the behaviour’s perceived effectiveness.

3) Conduct individual interviews with a representative sample of the target group members, using the question(s) defined in point 2.

4) To calculate the indicator’s value, divide the number of respondents who experience the given barrier by the total number of respondents. Multiply the result by 100 to convert it to a percentage.

Disaggregate the data by gender, wealth category, age group and any other relevant criteria.

1) People often face multiple barriers to practicing a given behaviour. Therefore, the methodology described above makes the most sense when it is used to assess the prevalence of multiple barriers. This allows you to see which barriers are the most prevalent and therefore worth being addressed by your project. Focusing on barriers that are experienced by more people will enable the project to achieve higher impact.

2) For information on identifying barriers to behaviour change, please refer to GIZ’s SBC Guide (see below) or People in Need’s Behaviour Change Toolkit (see below). For guidance on methods that are frequently used to identify which barriers to change people experience (not their prevalence), visit this website.