Collective efficacy (CE) is one such factor. In many sectors, including but not limited to WASH, community-based programmes that target higher order groups (e.g., households, villages, health centres, government ministries) often inadequately address factors of collective behaviour in their intervention design and implementation strategies. It is pertinent to question whether the WASH sector is considering potentially important behavioural antecedents (i.e., upstream behavioural factors predictive of downstream behavioural, health, and development impacts) in their theories of change, intervention designs, and programme evaluations. When interpreting these findings, it is important to consider the implementation approaches and intervention techniques that were employed, as well as the level at which these interventions were targeted (e.g., individual, household, group, community). Results from rigorously designed and evaluated WASH studies demonstrate lower than expected impact of WASH interventions on health, in some cases due to poor intervention uptake and sustained adoption. Įvidence suggests that collective action is required for WASH interventions to reach the coverage and use levels likely required to realise health gains through “herd protection”. Overlooking or underestimating the role of collective behavioural factors, such as behavioural control perceptions (e.g., agency-related factors such as self- and collective efficacy) and social schemas (e.g., social norms) in the uptake of community-based interventions may, in turn, attenuate intervention impact. Yet, in order to facilitate interdependent adoption of improved collective behaviours, evidence suggests it is important for interventions to address underlying factors that facilitate action and change at those levels. This, perhaps, may be an artefact of common programme approaches that tend to address independent, individual and household-level behaviours while aiming for change at higher levels, such as villages, communities, or other collectives of people. Such is the case with many water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) interventions, some of which require collective action before first assessing whether reliance on shared agency is a realistic expectation, others of which neglect to address important factors of collective behaviour. It has become commonplace in international development to intervene in communities with interventions that require collective action without first gauging the communities’ perceptions regarding their ability and autonomy to engender and maintain change. These CE scales will allow implementers to better design and target community-level interventions, and examine the role of CE in the effectiveness of community-based programming. CE factor scores were significantly higher for men than women, even among household-level male-female dyads. All scales demonstrated high construct validity. We produced three CE scales: one each for men and women that allow for examinations of gender-specific mechanisms through which CE operates, and one 26-item CE scale that can be used across genders. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were carried out to examine underlying structures of CE for men and women in rural Ethiopia. We conducted this research within a cluster-randomised sanitation and hygiene trial in Amhara, Ethiopia. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a metric to assess factors related to CE. One possible explanation may be low collective efficacy (CE)-perceptions regarding a group’s ability to execute actions related to a common goal. These findings represent common challenges for public health and development programmes relying on collective action. Impact evaluations of water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions have demonstrated lower than expected health gains, in some cases due to low uptake and sustained adoption of interventions at a community level.
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