Themes of Tara Mistari 2022

Introducing spirals and constellation sheet | Session Lead

Designed by Context Part 1

Lead: Aditya Jagati

Ever wondered why we stop when seeing a red light on the road? Our mind automatically develops a connection that red indicates a warning. Going one step deeper, what exactly does our mind tell us? In India, people look at a red light and see it as an indication that if we cross it, something bad could happen. In the US, most people see it as a direction or a prescription (Red= Stop). Similarly, red is a color of prosperity in China and danger in most parts of the world. Would it then make sense to have the ‘red light’ in some other color in China? Our decisions and actions are a function of the context in which we operate, and that context is an amalgamation of a host of factors including one’s exposure, one’s state of reference, cultural and economic background, the regulations and rule of law where one grew up, one’s mood at a particular point in time, traditions and rituals, and others. While there is merit to explore what exactly context is, for now, we would like to see in action how context impacts design. The wonderful thing about Busara are its people who come from various backgrounds, countries, and have varied levels of lived experiences from all walks of life. While we appreciate the unity in diversity, this exercise is to appreciate its diversity through design.

We will come together and form groups: Country offices (India, Nigeria, Tanzania), local Kenyans in Nairobi and non-locals in Nairobi. We will take up a design challenge, and to give ourselves a break (more to prevent us from anchoring to existing design ideas), we will take a topic that is completely unrelated to our work. And then we'll tackle the challenge!

Busara's journey: A conversation with Johannes Haushofer

Lead: Jaspreet Singh

Running experiments in the Global South - and when not to

Lead: Aya Vang/ Mark Milrine/ Jaspreet Singh

Experiments are an invaluable tool for evaluating interventions and have stood the test of time in face of challenges like the replicability crisis. But are experiments the only option out there? Are they the best option available to us? Over the years, Busara has run its fair share (and perhaps more) of the experiments and with each project, we are learning more and more about experiments, how to run them and most importantly, when to run them. In this session, we reflect on some of the learnings we have accumulated from running experiments in the Global South. We will cover topics like: - What does ‘evaluating’ an intervention really mean? - What can and cannot we learn from experiments? - Experiment design and Intervention implementation - Statistical significance in the real world - Lab vs. Field Trade-offs - Alternatives to experiments in intervention evaluations

Experimental partnerships: A behavioral approach to relationship development

Lead: Nate Peterson | Moderator: Ritika Divekar

'A behavioral approach to partnership development processes'. I suggest a behaviorally-informed, experimental approach to creating partnerships between key players in development (e.g. companies, governments, NGO/multilateral policy makers and funders) in which we more carefully create balanced agreements and facilitate discussions. I'm especially keen to develop efficiencies in last-mile distribution, more appropriate policy to accommodate business/climate realities, and funding to de-risk it all until partners know their relative contributions to collaborations.

Lessons from psychology's credibility crisis

Lead: Patrick Forscher | Moderator: Shalmali

In 2011, a famous social psychologist named Darryl Bem published a paper in the most prestigious social psychology journal with the following claim: people can see into the future. This claim is ridiculous, yet the paper used methods that, according to the standards in social psychology at that time, seemed credible.This session will cover the events that followed the publication of this paper, a period of questioning of standard research practices that some call the "credibility crisis". I will use these events to illustrate what we've learned about how to do credible research, and how to identify whether a given set of research findings is credible

Reimagining methods: A creative exercise in envisioning what our own starting point should look like

Lead: Pooja Gupta | Moderator: Engy Saleh

Busara’s work advertently or inadvertently addresses social change. We have projects that directly work on harmful social practices such as gender-based violence or indirectly focus on altering regressive gender norms to improve uptake of an agricultural crop insurance product. Both these examples target different behaviors, however, have the same underlying social issue that needs to be addressed to sustainably change behavior and improve lives and livelihoods of participants, in this case women. Busara presents a novel approach to development where we embed ourselves in the local context through our staff and offices and use ‘supposedly’ participatory, mixed-methods approaches to present scientific, evidence-based and rigorous solutions for social change. However, the theories, assumptions, literature and our gold standard of success, which form the foundation and reference point of our approach, are rooted in contexts and scholarship that reflect the cleavages of the colonial past.

As a thought experiment, let’s look at our focus on social norms as a toolkit to transform people’s attitudes and change their behaviors. After six pioneering years in this field, it’s time Busara questions its strong identity as an organization based in the Global South and redefines how it exemplifies people and problems of the Global South - merely through representation or through a critical evaluation of its approach and objectives. Our current approach to contextualization includes testing if behavioral science theory developed in the West is universal and transporting measurement frameworks developed by western researchers and using local knowledge to contextualize them. These applications of contextualization still fall within the problematic realms of colonization of social science research where the starting point is defined by western thought and ideology. Producing more local knowledge in non-WEIRD societies is one way to bridge the knowledge gap and imbalance that exists between research published in WEIRD and non-WEIRD countries. However, we also need to question what knowledge is being produced and how it is being produced, captured and disseminated to propagate policies and programmes that have local ownership and endorsement and can (attempt to) achieve the ambitious goal of social change.

Busara's interpretations of our Global South identity: How does our team composition influence our work?

Lead: Deqa Adens | Moderator: Stanley Ngugi

What does it mean to be a Global South organisation? What are the different perspectives within Busara on this? How do these different perspectives influence how we do our work, how we imagine our contribution, where we want to go? This is a discussion in which we learn about the findings of the internal research on this.

We give to get

Lead: Rahab Kariuki | Moderator: Kriti Chohan

We all live two lives. On one hand we form and maintain close relationships with family and friends while on the other hand we have impersonal relationships with other members of society. These relationships require a different set of rules to govern appropriate behavior. Such as openness, equity, fairness and love for close relationships while for the impersonal, cooperation, reciprocity and respect. These rules have governed for centuries how we deal with problems from coping with natural disasters to dividing up resources among people. In such scenarios where we are faced with uncertainty and survival, perhaps the rules cross and it's not always clear when we switch from one life to another.

In a personal society such as you would find in Africa, the idea of insurance might be alienating. The insurance mechanism is a financial cross subsidization within a pool of large numbers potentially exposed to similar events. Just a financial transaction, while personal social networks thrive on more than financial relationships. Social trust and social capital are important aspects of protection of the individual in the community. For most economic shocks, when an individual experiences a loss event, the implications are felt and resolved at a household level and sometimes beyond. In such a society, the proposition to buy insurance then feels like an invitation to replace a ''working'' social mechanism that offers more than financial protection. Motivational universality of the modern insurance mechanism is one example of how the WEIRD problem manifests.

So, in this context will insurance change people or shall we make insurance more social?

WEIRD or non-WEIRD? How Henrich's work can help us unpack findings on Busara's identity

Lead: Mareike Schomerus | Moderator: Nengapate Kuria

Within Busara, we often use the language of being an organisation in the Global South, working on research and practice in ways that are appropriate and beneficial to the Global South. We also frequently use Henrich’s framing of the notion of psychological diversity within so-called WEIRD and non-WEIRD populations. This session is an opportunity to discuss both our identity as a Global South organisation and how this links to how we work with the notions of WEIRD/non-WEIRD populations.

How to strengthen a culture of evidence, experimentation and innovation through behavioral science: Lessons from working with East African CSOs

Lead: Gideon Too | Moderator: Gitanksh Sethi

Busara has witnessed many of the ways that the public and social sectors have been re-imagining their work through behavioral science, while also playing an active role in driving and shaping this evolution. From this, we have learned that the practical usefulness of behavioral science is fully realised when its insights and tools are placed in the right hands. These include those of local civil society organizations (CSOs) - crucial vehicles for deepening governance, accountability and inclusive development. However, compared to stakeholders in the private sector, there has been little experimentation and innovation on methods that best incorporate behavioral approaches by CSOs. This is often due to a general limited awareness of the existence of resources and methods available for experimentation and innovation, and a perception that behavioral science is too technical, academic, or complex for their organizations. Additionally, CSOs frequently face particular pressures, incentives and competing priorities e.g relationships with policymakers and funders with short funding cycles. My presentation will therefore share some of the key lessons learned in efforts to develop and strengthen a culture of evidence, experimentation and innovation through the application of behavioral science among CSOs in East Africa.

Feedback and accountability for development

Lead: Joel Mumo | Moderator: Jonathan Karl

The use of experiments in social science has brought huge gains in our knowledge of the world. However, in recent debates, sharp critiques of the power imbalances of the discipline have been made. Busara believes in the unique power of experimentation for precisely answering many urgent research questions, and thus, we must reflect on how we conduct our research. We cannot hope to pursue the uncertain pathway of doing good in the world through the means of research if at the first hurdle we harm. In everything we do at Busara, We seek to elevate the values of respect and purpose. Our research should be at the center of that. To do this effectively, we need to ensure we understand what the people we seek to serve want and whether we are helping them get it. We need to critically examine the research topics we should focus on, how our research can properly reflect and represent the lives of the people we study, and how participants can be better engaged and benefit from our studies. It is with this purpose that we formalized the research ethics agenda. As part of this plan, we will collect and analyze data on the experiences of our research participants and use this data to find better ways of closing the loop in communication with participants. We believe this is both juster and likely to produce better quality research.

Lead: Aditya Jagati

Lead: Prof. Joseph Henrich