Sisters of Success: Measuring the Impact of Mentoring and Girls Groups in Supporting Girls’ Transition Into Adolescence and Adulthood 2013
Liberia, 2013 - 2014
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LBR_2013_SOS-BL_v01_M
Sisters of Success: Measuring the Impact of Mentoring and Girls Groups in Supporting Girls’ Transition Into Adolescence and Adulthood 2013
Baseline Survey
| Name | Country code |
|---|---|
| Liberia | LBR |
Impact Evaluation Survey
The Sisters of Success (SOS) program supports girls’ transition into adolescence and adulthood. The SOS program’s primary goals are to reduce in-school girls’ likelihood of dropping out of school; to increase out-of-school girls’ likelihood of returning to school; and to reduce girls’ risky sexual behavior and likelihood of becoming pregnant as a minor. More broadly, the SOS program aims to help girls adopt healthy behaviors; build confidence and self-esteem; learn and practice their rights; begin to develop savings and financial literacy habits; increase their community participation and involvement; and work towards their own personal development goals.
The SOS program was implemented in Monrovia, Liberia, by IRC and two local organizations - EDUCARE and Planned Parenthood Association of Liberia (PPAL) - during 2014 and 2015. The program matched girls to mentors - approximately ten girls per mentor, and involved “Sisterhood Meetings” of two mentors and their respective mentees, twice a month over the course of 15 months, as well as some larger group extracurricular activities. Mentors are women from the community that are 18 or older, secondary school graduates, who volunteered to become mentors.
The baseline data will be used jointly with an endline dataset to evaluate the impact of the Sisters of Success program.
Sample survey data [ssd]
- Households
- Girls
Version
- v01, edited anonymous datasets for public distribution.
Variables related to names, phone numbers, addresses and emails of respondents and GPS coordinates were anonymized.
Scope
The scope of the Sisters of Success (SOS) includes:
-
HOUSEHOLD: Housing quality, Food security, Household assets, Demographics, Education, Demographics, Income, Decision-making, Financial distress, Access to cred, Savings balance, Debt balance, Ability, Voice, General, Future IGA prospects, Marriage and childbearing, Other, Appropriate activities for girls and Returns to education.
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GIRLS: Demographics, Education, Sex and relationships with men, Pregnancy and children, Domestic and sexual violence, Social, Support, Freedom of movement, Gender attitudes, Personality and self-perception, Skills assessment, Income generating activities, Income transfers, Savings and Debt, Girl's physical appearance, Girl’s time use, Mentors and/or Role Models, Conclusion and Multiple study participants in house or household.
Coverage
Liberia’s capital city, Monrovia.
Producers and sponsors
| Name | Affiliation |
|---|---|
| Tricia Kroknay-Palicz | World Bank |
| Juliette Seban | IRC |
| Joao Montalvao | World Bank |
| Name |
|---|
| The World Bank |
Sampling
The recruitment of girls interested in the SOS program, who would also be part of the research, was carried out during October and November 2013, across Greater Monrovia, in 16 urban and 2 peri-urban communities.
These 18 communities jointly have a population of 264.000. We estimate that these 18 zones jointly have a total of 11.000 girls aged 12-15.7 In total, 3,060 eligible girls registered as interested in the SOS program. Recruitment targets were set by community, in line with each community’s population, and recruitment within each community was closed once that community’s target was met.
The research team carried out a baseline survey between October 2013 and January 2014, and successfully interviewed 2,884 of these girls as well as one guardian for each girl. These 2,884 girls thus became the “study sample.”, and they were then randomly assigned by the research team to either a “treatment group” that will receive the SOS program (1420 girls), or a “control group” that will not (1464 girls). Randomization to treatment or control was done in January 2014 at the individual-girl level, and stratified by zone, age of girl, and the girl’s schooling status. Also, close friends, sisters, and girls who live together were randomized jointly to treatment or control. Approximately half of the girls were assigned to the treatment group, and half to the control group.
The study has included two data collection rounds: a baseline survey after enrollment but before randomization into treatment and control; and an endline survey that began in December 2015, approximately nine months after the conclusion of the SOS program. Survey data is collected from all girls in the study sample, as well as a guardian for each. The impact of the program will be captured by comparing the endline data for the treatment girls to the endline data for the control girls. Qualitative data is also collected to help better establish the mechanisms through which the program is impacting the girls as well as their life experiences during this life juncture. This will be gathered through in-depth qualitative interviews carried out one-on-one by trained researchers with a panel of girls, who are a randomly selected sub-set of study sample girls. A first round of interviews was done a few months after the program’s start.
Survey instrument
Data was collected from individuals using two quantitative survey instruments developed for this study: a survey instrument for girls (“Girls questionnaire”) and a survey instrument for guardians (Household questionnaire).
Data collection
| Start | End | Cycle |
|---|---|---|
| 2013-10-01 | 2014-01-01 | Baseline |
The household questionnaire requires an average of 45 minutes to be completed while the girl’s survey requires an average of 100 minutes to be completed. Data collection was done using paper questionnaires.
The surveys were written in Liberian English, and conducted by Liberian enumerators. Half of the enumerators were females while half of the enumerators were males. Enumerators’ knowledge and understanding of the instruments were evaluated at the end of a 2 weeks training. Out of those who successfully passed the test, 5 Teams of 8 enumerators (4 males and 4 females) + one team leader were created.
These teams of enumerator followed the registration teams in the communities, and survey would start as soon as the registration was over.
Enumerators used the tracking sheets filled during registration to find the girls and their guardians. They asked for the consent of guardians to be surveyed, the consent of the guardian to survey the girl and the consent of the girl to be surveyed, and then proceeded with the survey.
Data processing
Questionnaires were sent to a data entry firm in Ghana at the end of the survey, and data were entered from February until April 2014. The data entry firm entered the data twice and then compared the two entries to control for the eventuality of data entry error. Data were renamed, checked for inconsistencies, and labelled by a qualified IPA RA.
Data appraisal
A minimum of 15% of the surveys were randomly selected for a data audit. IPA, in collaboration with the Evaluation team, prepared an audit form that draws from the full-length questionnaire. The audit questionnaire is intended to last no more than 15 minutes of interview time. A comparison/discrepancies sheet was created and filled by the Auditor. Auditors worked independently of the baseline team in order to limit communication between the auditors and the enumerators.
Depositor information
| Name | Affiliation |
|---|---|
| Brittany Nicole Hill | The World Bank |
Data Access
The use of the datasets must be acknowledged using a citation which would include:
- the identification of the Primary Investigator (including country name);
- the full title of the survey and its acronym (when available), and the year(s) of implementation;
- the survey reference number;
- the source and date of download (for datasets disseminated online).
Example:
Tricia Kroknay-Palicz, Juliette Seban, Joao Montalvao, World Bank. Liberia - Sisters of Success: Measuring the impact of mentoring and girls groups in supporting girls’ transition into adolescence and adulthood 2013, Baseline Survey. Ref. LBR_2013_SOS-BL_v01_M. Dataset downloaded from [URL] on [date].
Disclaimer and copyrights
The user of the data acknowledges that the original collector of the data, the authorized distributor of the data, and the relevant funding agency bear no responsibility for use of the data or for interpretations or inferences based upon such uses.
Contacts
| Name | Affiliation | |
|---|---|---|
| Tricia Kroknay-Palicz | World Bank | tgonwa@worldbank.org |