Champions of Change: Leveraging Convert Communicators to Maximize Impact

Last registered on June 23, 2026
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Champions of Change: Leveraging Convert Communicators to Maximize Impact
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0018924
Initial registration date
June 19, 2026

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
June 23, 2026, 8:31 AM EDT

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

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name
Nina Buchmann
Affiliation
Princeton University
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Yasmine Bekkouche
PI Affiliation
Jacobs Foundation
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PI Name
Sarah Deschênes
PI Affiliation
World Bank
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PI Name
Rozenn Hotte
PI Affiliation
Université de Tours - LEO
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Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2026-02-23
End date
2030-06-01
Keywords
Behavior, Gender
Additional Keywords
Gender, attitudes, social targeting
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
Restrictive gender norms limit the autonomy, education, and health of women and girls across Sub-Saharan Africa. Programs that train adolescents to promote gender equality typically recruit self-selected volunteers, who tend to hold relatively progressive views already. This study tests whether such programs become more effective when they also recruit more conservative adolescents. Working with Plan International's Champions of Change program in Benin, we run a clustered randomized trial across villages that varies whether the program enrolls only progressive volunteers or a mix of progressive volunteers and more conservative peers, and we measure adoption of gender-equal attitudes and behaviors among both participants and their non-participating peers. The goal is to identify recruitment strategies that maximize the spread of gender-equal norms at scale.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Bekkouche, Yasmine et al. 2026. "Champions of Change: Leveraging Convert Communicators to Maximize Impact." AEA RCT Registry. June 23. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.18924-1.0
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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The intervention is Plan International's Champions of Change program, a gender-transformative life-skills program for adolescents aged 13–17. Selected adolescents ("Champions," both girls and boys) receive a multi-session curriculum on life skills and gender equality (assertiveness, body confidence, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and gender equality), delivered through gender-adapted curricula. Champions are then encouraged to influence their peers through structured dialogues and activities such as peer-to-peer conversations and sports.
The experiment varies who is recruited as Champions across villages: a control group with no Champions, a status-quo arm of self-selected progressive volunteers, and a mixed arm combining volunteers with more conservative peers. This lets us compare recruiting progressive volunteers alone against recruiting a mix of progressives and conservatives.
Intervention Start Date
2026-08-01
Intervention End Date
2028-08-01

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Adoption of gender-equal attitudes and gender-equal behaviors, measured among both program participants (Champions) and their non-participating peers.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
Attitudes are elicited through vignette stories and survey questions on gender norms and equality. Individual items are aggregated into standardized mean-effects indices (Kling/Anderson-style indices) for gender-equal attitudes and behaviors, constructed separately for participants and for peers.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The study is a clustered randomized controlled trial across 240 villages in Benin, in three stages. First, a baseline survey in each village identifies progressive and conservative adolescents — eliciting gender attitudes through vignette stories — along with their friendship networks. Second, villages are randomly assigned to a control arm with no Champions, a status-quo arm with self-selected volunteer Champions, or a mixed arm combining volunteers with more conservative peers; the program is then delivered to 40 Champions per village (20 boys and 20 girls) in the treated arms. Third, a small set of villages is used to benchmark alternative seeding strategies. Outcomes are measured by surveying 36 Champions and 30 non-participating peers in each village.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
In office by a computer.
Randomization Unit
The village is the unit of randomization and the level of clustering. Treatment arms are assigned at the village level; there is a single level of randomization. Standard errors are clustered at the village level.
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
240 villages in Benin: 234 villages in the main randomized trial plus 6 villages in the benchmarking exercise.
Sample size: planned number of observations
66 surveyed adolescents per village — 36 Champions and 30 non-participating peers — for 15,444 adolescents across the 234 main-trial villages, plus the adolescents in the 6 benchmarking villages.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Main trial — 234 villages split evenly across three arms: 78 villages control, 78 villages status-quo/volunteer Champions, 78 villages mixing (volunteer + conservative Champions). Benchmarking — 6 villages: 3 conservatives-only and 3 network-central-only.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
0.2 standard deviations on the standardized (Kling) mean-effects indices for gender-equal attitudes, decision-making, and empowerment, among both treated Champions and untreated peers. Based on simulations using means, SDs, and intracluster correlations (ICC ≥ 0.15) from the 2017 Benin DHS, assuming 95% significance, 80% power, and 5% attrition.
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Princeton University Institutional Review Board
IRB Approval Date
2026-02-23
IRB Approval Number
18385
IRB Name
Plan International Ethics Review Team (ERT)
IRB Approval Date
2026-02-05
IRB Approval Number
N/A
Analysis Plan