The
Kenya Diffusion and Ideational Change Project (KDICP)
General
Aims
This
is the homepage of the Kenya Diffusion and Ideational Change
Project (KDICP), led by Susan Watkins and Jere Behrman. The KDICP
is formally affiliated with the African
Population and Health Research Center in Nairobi, Kenya.
The overall aim of this project is to examine the role of social
networks in changing attitudes and behavior regarding family size,
family planning, and HIV/AIDS in Kenya. The project focuses on
two key empirical questions: the roles of social interactions in
(1) the acceptance (or rejection) of modern contraceptive methods
and of smaller ideal family size; and (2) the diffusion of knowledge
of AIDS symptoms and transmission mechanisms and the evaluation
of acceptable strategies of protection against AIDS.
Underlying these goals is the notion that informal social interaction
may be an important mechanism influencing attitudes and behavior.
It is likely to work either directly (for example when individuals
exchange and evaluate stories of their own experiences, or the
experiences of people they know or they have heard about) or indirectly
(by exchanging and evaluating the information disseminated by institutional
sources such as family
planning/health programs and the media). Thus, aside from their
theoretical significance, these social interaction effects appear
to be important for program design and sustainability. We think
of these two projects, then, as a step toward understanding and
measuring social interaction effects on behavior.
Research teams associated with the KDICP have visited the field
on four occasions between 1994 and 2000. Preliminary qualitative
work, including semi-structured interviewing, focus groups, and
questionnaire pre-testing, was conducted during the summer of 1994.
A first survey wave followed in the winter 1994-5. Second and third
survey waves followed in the winter of 1996-7 and in early 2000.
At the moment, there are no plans to revisit the sites.
Data
Availability
All
survey data collected by the Kenya Diffusion and Ideational Change
Project are available for download free of charge.
Three
types of survey data are available for public use. These include:
• cross-sectional,
individual-level data for men and women;
• cross-sectional, couple data for husbands and wives;
• longitudinal, individual-level data for men and women;
• longitudinal, couple data for husband and wives.
Qualitative
data collected by the Kenya Diffusion and Ideational Change
Projects and fieldnotes are also available for download.
Funding
KDICP-1
was funded through a grant to Naomi Rutenberg and Susan Watkins
from the U.S. Agency for International Development under the
EVALUATION Project, Contract No. DPE-3060-C-00-1054-00; and by
a dissertation grant to Steven Green from the Population Council
and AVSC International.
KDICP-1 was sdone in collaboration with Charles
Onoka,
Allan
Ferguson
of GTZ/Ministry
of Health, and
David Wilkinson of Innovative Communication Systems. KDICP-2
and KCICP-3 were funded by grant from the Rockefeller
Foundation to Susan Watkins and Eliya Zulu; KIDCP-3
also received funding from the National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), grant
# R01-HD37276, to Susan Watkins and Jere R. Behrman.