Peer-reviewed article
Challenging Norms and Perceptions on Child Marriage among Adolescent Girls in Indonesia: A Randomized Experiment
Milda Irhamni, Gumilang Aryo Sahadewo ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-sonnet-5-5This study tested a short entertainment-education movie meant to change how adolescent girls and their parents think about child marriage in Indonesia. It was a randomized control trial in two provinces, using two versions of the movie. One version focused on the costs of child marriage, such as health and education effects. The other added religious messages encouraging girls to complete their education. The cost-focused version improved perceptions of child marriage consistently, while the version with religious messages gave mixed results.
Key points
- A randomized control trial was run in two provinces in Indonesia with two versions of a short movie.
- The costs-only version consistently improved scores on the child marriage perception scale.
- The version with added religious messages had mixed evidence.
- The program improved overall perception and perceived risks of child marriage, rather than perceptions of the benefits of child marriage or of delaying it.
- Results were consistent for both girls and their parents.
Limitations
The abstract reports changes in perceptions and norms, not changes in actual marriage rates or behaviour. It gives no effect sizes, sample sizes, or follow-up length, and the type of publication is not stated, so the doc_type is inferred.
Abstract
Despite improved access to education and socioeconomic conditions, child marriage remains high in several countries. Part of the problems are norms and perceptions that continue to enable justification of the practice in society. We test the effectiveness of an entertainment-education short movie program targeted toward main child marriage actors, adolescents, and parents to address norms and perceptions regarding the costs and benefits of child marriage. We conducted a randomized control trial in two provinces in Indonesia using two different versions of the movie. The first version focuses on the cost of child marriage, including health and education impact. Given the role of religion in child marriage decisions, we also create another version of the movie to include additional religious messages that encourage the completion of education vis-a-vis child marriage. We find consistent improvements in perceptions about child marriage in the child marriage perception scale on the costs of child marriage-only intervention. The intervention results with additional religious messages have mixed evidence. The intervention improves the overall perception and risks of child marriage rather than the perceptions of the benefits and the benefits of delaying it. These results are consistent for both girls and their parents.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- An entertainment-education short movie on the costs of child marriage, with a second version adding religious messages encouraging completion of education over child marriage
- Population
- Adolescent girls and their parents in two provinces in Indonesia
Key finding
The costs-only movie consistently improved scores on the child marriage perception scale.
Irhamni et al. · Crossref · 1 Jan 2023