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Field
Experimental Design (Public)
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Before
To understand whether access to public handwashing stations improves people’s hygiene practices, we collected a list of potential villages from BRAC-WASH programme where BRAC can install the public handwashing stations in their selected 20 sub-districts from three divisions-Dhaka, Mymensingh and Khulna. Then, from each of these 20 sub-districts we randomly selected 10 villages, of which 5 villages are assigned to the control group, which will not receive HBCC interventions (i.e., no new public handwashing stations or related community demonstrations/communications). The rest of the 5 villages are assigned to the treatment group where BRAC’s WASH team must implement the HBCC interventions. We have 98 villages (from 20 sub-districts) to control and 96 to treatment. Because of an insufficient number of village selection in Khulna city (one of the 20 sub-districts), we had to reduce the number of treatment and control villages from this sub-district. In the rest of the villages listed, the program may/may not be implemented.
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After
To understand whether access to public handwashing stations improves people’s hygiene practices, we collected a list of potential villages from BRAC-WASH programme where BRAC can install the public handwashing stations in their selected 20 sub-districts from three divisions-Dhaka, Mymensingh and Khulna. Then, from each of these 20 sub-districts we randomly selected 10 villages, of which 5 villages are assigned to the control group, which will not receive HBCC interventions (i.e., no new public handwashing stations or related community demonstrations/communications). The rest of the 5 villages are assigned to the treatment group where BRAC’s WASH team must implement the HBCC interventions. We have 98 villages (from 20 sub-districts) to control and 96 to treatment. Because of an insufficient number of village selection in Khulna city (one of the 20 sub-districts), we had to reduce the number of treatment and control villages from this sub-district. In the rest of the villages listed, the program may/may not be implemented.
Re-randomization for soap distribution
The first round household survey revealed that soap use significantly increased while handwashing frequency and soap expenditure decreased but not statistically significant for treatment villages. Around one-fourth of the treatment households received the soap from BRAC. From the results, it can be hypothesized that handwashing with soap reduces the repeated handwashing frequencies and people who use soap are more likely to wash their hands less frequently to save soap expenditure. In order to test these hypotheses, we would like to provide the soap among randomly selected 50% of our surveyed households. This re-randomization of soap distribution is stratified at the sub-district level. The numbers of soap-recipient households are 3,842 (1,909 households from treatment villages and 1,933 households from control villages. The research team distributes the soaps in their capacity.
Re-randomization for the phone survey
The second wave of COVID-19 showed up at the end of March in 2021 worldwide. This wave drastically increased the number of cases in Bangladesh since its outbreak and the government announced lockdown nationwide in early April 2021 to control the spread. During that situation, we planned to carry out a phone survey with a short questionnaire to understand the situation at that time. We conducted the phone survey on those households who were successfully surveyed in the first round of survey. On top of it, Ramadan was about to start. Thus, we randomly divided the sample into two groups- to be surveyed before and during Ramadan. This randomization is also stratified at the sub-district level. 44% of the households were interviewed before Ramadan and the rest of them were interviewed during Ramadan.
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Field
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
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Before
96 treatment villages and 98 control villages
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After
96 treatment villages and 98 control villages
3,842 households received the soap of which 1909 are from treatment villages and 1933 are from control villages. And 3845 households did not receive any soap of which 1898 are from treatment villages and 1947 are from control villages.
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