Village-level data for the Honduras 176 RCT

Certain people occupy topological positions within social networks that enhance their effectiveness at inducing spillovers. We mapped face-to-face networks among 24,702 people in 176 isolated villages in Honduras and randomly assigned villages to targeting methods, varying the fraction of households receiving a 22-month health education package and the method by which households were chosen (randomly, or via the “friendship paradox” technique). We assessed 117 diverse knowledge, attitude, and practice outcomes. Friendship targeting at various thresholds reduced the number of households needed to attain specified levels of village-wide uptake. Knowledge spread more readily than behavior, and spillovers extended to two degrees of separation. Outcomes that were intrinsically easier to adopt also manifested greater spillovers. Network targeting using friendship nomination effectively promotes population-wide improvements in welfare via social contagion. , The RCT was pre-registered in the following paper:
Shakya HB, et al., “Exploiting Social Influence to Magnify Population-Level Behavior Change in Maternal and Child Health: A Randomized Controlled Trial of Network Targeting Algorithms in Rural Honduras,” BMJ Open 2017; 7: e012996. (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2016-012996), , # Village-level data for the Honduras 176 RCT

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.kh18932f7](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.kh18932f7)

In our RCT, the unit of analysis are the households. Treatment consists of seminars delivered to household members, in order to induce behavior change in maternal and child health practices, attitudes, and knowledge. In the RCT, there are approximately 24,000, living in 10,000 households, across 176 villages. We employed a 2x8 experimental design: first, assigning villages to 16 treatment arms, and then selecting households within each village to receive treatment. Treatment arms each contain 11 villages, and are defined by a combination of two aspects of treatment: (i) whether households were selected using random-nomination targeting or friendship-nomination targeting, and (ii) the fraction of the households to be selected for treatment in each village (namely, 0%, 5%, 10%, 20%, 30%, 50%, 75%, and 100%). Responses were collected for many outcomes, using a ...