Social norms, parenting behaviors and child aspirations: Two survey experiments in Ghana

This study aims to understand the influence of social norms on survey responses, focusing on parenting behaviors as reported by a sample of ~2,500 parents, and the educational and job aspirations of their adolescent children in Ghana. We do so through two survey experiments. With regards to parents, we test if random prior exposure to a survey module reminding them about social image around culturally sensitive parenting behaviors leads them to report differently on their own disciplinary practices towards their children. We assess whether there is an effect of eliciting social pressure norms on parents reports of their parenting practices, in a way that aligns with their perceived social norms in the community around these behaviors. We test heterogeneity by examining differences in effects by parental gender, socio-economic status (SES), baseline social desirability bias score, and enumerator gender.
For adolescents, we assess if random prior exposure to a survey module to measure child gender attitudes leads to differential reporting on their educational and job aspirations. In doing so, we test whether making gender norms more salient leads to lower reported aspirations and/or expectations for girls, consistent with the ‘stereotype threat’ literature, and boost such aspirations for boys, consistent with the ‘stereotype boost’ hypothesis. Further, we assess whether such effects are different for younger and older adolescents; parental characteristics (SES, and gender norms beliefs); and whether they vary by the gender of the enumerator.