SafeHub RCT "Empowering internally displaced women through a gender transformative intervention in Burkina Faso"

Last registered on January 22, 2025

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
SafeHub RCT "Empowering internally displaced women through a gender transformative intervention in Burkina Faso"
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0015217
Initial registration date
January 17, 2025

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
January 22, 2025, 8:09 AM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Affiliation
Higher Institute for Population Sciences

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
Higher Institute for Population Sciences
PI Affiliation
Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO)
PI Affiliation
Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO)
PI Affiliation
Higher Institute for Population Sciences

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2025-08-01
End date
2026-12-31
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
Rationale: Burkina Faso faces the fastest-growing displacement crisis, with one in 10 internally displaced persons (IDP) in 2023, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council and the Ministry of Social Action of the country respectively. Previous research under the SSRD-COVID project (2021–2024), funded by the International Development Research Center, demonstrated that safe spaces and husbands' schools significantly improve women's sexual and reproductive empowerment.
Objective: Building on these findings, this study will assess, via a Randomized Control Trial (RCT), the impact of a gender-transformative intervention, "SafeHub", combining safe spaces and husbands' schools on internally displaced women's empowerment.
Methods: Three intervention arms—control, safe spaces only, and combined interventions—will randomize 371 households per arm. Data collection will occur over three months, informed by prior power calculations.
Expected Results: Safe Spaces are anticipated to empower internally displaced women, with enhanced outcomes when combined with husbands' schools.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
ONADJA, Yentema et al. 2025. "SafeHub RCT "Empowering internally displaced women through a gender transformative intervention in Burkina Faso"." AEA RCT Registry. January 22. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.15217-1.0
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Safe spaces and Husbands' schools.
Intervention Start Date
2025-10-01
Intervention End Date
2026-09-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Internally displaced women empowerment
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
We construct an index for each type of empowerment (economic, psychological, personal, and relational) as some programs can improve women’s control over the household’s expenses while having no significance on their asset ownership (Schwab et al., 2020). We follow the method of Anderson (2008), which was used to construct indices of aspirations, gender, and gender behaviour attitudes in an intervention targeting adolescents in India (Dhar et al., 2022). The method was also used by Haushofer and Shapiro (2016) in Kenya to assess the impact of unconditional cash transfers, and Janzen et al. (2018) in Nepal to assess the impact of livestock transfer and training programs. The summary index that uses a Generalized Least Squares (GLS) weighting procedure has the advantage of assigning less weight to highly correlated variables and more weight to uncorrelated indicators to improve efficiency (Schwab et al., 2020). Also, the procedure uses available data and assigns lower weights to indicators with missing values to allow calculation of the index, even for observations with missing values.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Randomized Cluster Design
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
In office
Randomization Unit
Households
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
742
Sample size: planned number of observations
890
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
371
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
MDE: 10% Proportion: 0.57 Std. Dev: 0.49
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
IRB Approval Date
IRB Approval Number