Passages Project: Masculinité, Famille, et Foi (MFF) Intervention Baseline Men's Survey (Subset)

In partnership with a team of global health experts—Georgetown’s Institute for Reproductive Health (IRH), FHI 360, Johns Hopkins Global Early Adolescent Study (GEAS), Population Services International (PSI), Save the Children, and Tearfund—the Passages Project is working to establish an evidence base on scalable social norm change approaches that reduce stigma and myths related to FP use, increase male engagement in FP, reduce sexual and GBV, and improve gender-equitable attitudes and behaviors. Tearfund, a Passages partner, is a Christian relief and development agency that works locally in Kinshasa. Starting in 2014, Tearfund developed and collected evidence to demonstrate the effectiveness of an intervention approach, known locally as the Transforming Masculinities (TM) approach, which engages religious leaders and faith communities to encourage reflection, discussion, and action to promote gender-equitable beliefs with the goal of reducing GBV. As part of the Passages project, partner organizations added components to the original TM curriculum approach that focus on use of FP methods, developing the new enhanced intervention known locally as Masculinité, Famille, et Foi (MFF). These data are drawn from a baseline MFF survey conducted between September 2016 and February 2017 with 407 male community members belonging to 17 communities serviced by MFF in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The survey included questions on demographics, attitudes, behaviors, and social norms. The survey was informed by two formative phases of research. One was undertaken in the Ituri Province in northeastern DRC prior to the original conceptualization of the Transforming Masculinities intervention approach, and the other was an exploration of social norms conducted in Kinshasa in early 2016. Both formative phases utilized participatory qualitative techniques and confirmed a range of social norms influential for target behaviors.