CRS Youth Ambassador Peace Building Program in Northern Ghana

The research hopes to uncover whether communities with stakeholders who participated in the youth ambassador training program exhibit: a) higher levels of social cohesion b) greater participation by and incorporation of youth and c) reduced levels of violence during the 2016 elections.

We also seek to understand existing social divisions including ethnicity, generational differences, gender, and occupational differences. Specifically, we are interested in cleavages among youth (those 35 and under) and older citizens (over 35) -in terms of attitudes, political preferences, participation patterns sense of inclusion, social trust, and inclusion. We use a trust game and a task game to try to assess how young vs. old citizens play (trust and task force) and also how people play (trust games) when they have partners that are old vs. young.

2018-05-31

2018-06-08

anticipate youth (those under 35) will express:
H1: lower levels of internal and external efficacy
H2: lower levels of belonging with their community
H3: lower levels of political participation in formal politics (voting, campaigning, contacting and official)

We anticipate treated areas will exhibit:
H4: higher levels of social cohesion and trust
H5: greater youth participation
H6: lower levels of electoral violence

We explore existing youth/elder cleavages with experimental games and anticipate:
H7: higher interethnic trust among people under 30
H8: youth (those under 35) will be more likely to choose young task force members than those playing who are over 35
H9: youth (those under 35) will be more likely to choose women as task force members than those who are over 35
H10: youth are more likely to choose people of a different ethnic group than those who are over 35
H11: task force teams composed by youth will perform better than those composed by people over 35
H12: task force teams composed by youth will be less likely to include family members

We hope to provide CRS with an evaluation of their violence prevention and Youth Ambassador training program in Northern Ghana. Further, we hope to inform their broader strategic planning around social inclusion by providing baseline data on social cleavages and generational differences in terms of participation in those cleavages.

Procedures
We will be conducting surveys of 40 people at 36 sites (half had CRS intervention). Among the 40 people – 36 will play a trust game (measuring trust and trustworthiness) and 4 will play a task force game. The trust games are designed to measure trust and trustworthiness. The task force game is designed to measure favoritism and perceptions of skill/merit of others. Additionally, we will interview a youth leader, religious authorities, and a traditional leader at each site.

Sites were selected since they are home to one or more Youth Ambassadors Trained by CRS. Matching sites will be chosen from a list of potential sites (where there was a previous history of electoral violence) and to match characteristics of the sites that host Ambassadors. At each site, we will determine a “catchment area” around the Youth Ambassador’s neighborhood or a comparable location in the control sites. Then 40 respondents will be selected at random, using a quota sample to ensure that we have adequate variation on “old” (over 30) and “young” (under 30) respondents as well as equal numbers of women and men.

Among the 40 respondents, 4 (2 old and 2 young) will be selected at random for the task force game. The remaining 36 respondents will play a trust game (the protocol is included in the attachments).

CRS will provide contact information of the Youth Ambassador, traditional leader (where relevant), and religious authorities so that we can conduct qualitative interviews or focus groups with them. We anticipate conducting focus groups with youth and interviews with elders.

The research will be conducted by Jaimie Bleck, Kevin Fridy, and Paul Friesen along with approximately 40 youth from Northern Ghana trained as research assistants. We anticipate the survey and game will take approximately 45 minutes or less. The qualitative interviews/focus groups should take less than 2 hours. The data will be collected using tables (for the surveys and games) and recorded to be later transcribed (for the qualitative interviews). We only anticipate one visit per respondent.

Body of Evidence

We anticipate doing the following:
36 Youth Leader interviews
36 Religious Authorities Interview
36 Traditional Leader Interviews
1440 survey respondents
144 Taskforce games (720 participants)
756 Trust Games (1,512)



Sampling
We have generated a list of sites based on the location of Youth Peace Ambassadors (N=18) as well as 18 control sites that are matched with treated sites based on the following characteristics: existing levels of electoral violence, ethnic composition, population size, and geographic area.

We will use CRS list of youth ambassadors to locate their homes as the basis of the sampling unit. For control areas, we will try to determine a youth leader who could have been selected for participation in the program and then similarly use their homes to generate a sampling unit.

We will draw a catchment area around Youth Peace Ambassador’s house using enumeration area maps (exact unit to be defined pending maps). We will then use a random walk procedure to sample households. In each household, we will use a quota sample –alternating whether we ask for all members 18-30 or over 30 – and from this list we will randomly select respondents using playing cards (respondent pulling the highest card is interviewed). If respondents selected are not home; we will return to the household site twice before selecting a replacement household.

Random walk procedure starting from school closest to youth Ambassador's house or control school. Within household, type of respondents (over/under 35 and male or female) selected using handheld device randomized through qualtrics. Then all household members with selected characteristics were assigned a playing card and highest number was the respondent. For player Bs, we used similar randomization - but used treatment to determine whether we needed to specify (over/under 35).

18 sites determined by location of 1 or more youth ambassadors. We picked the school closest to their home and used to begin random walk patterns; 18 matched control sites were also selected. Then household selection was randomized with the walk and individuals were selected via randomization described above.

Note that the initial intervention was not administered in a randomized fashion - so all assessments of the treatment need to be done using a post-hoc matching process.

Yes

36 sites

1500

40