Checklist for Reporting on Malaria Social and Behavior Change Program Evaluations

Over a period of several years, representatives from a variety of research and non-profit organisations - who eventually formed the Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) Task Force of the Roll Back Malaria Social and Behavior Change Communication (RBM SBCC) Working Group - met to discuss opportunities and gaps in the monitoring and evaluation of malaria social and behaviour change (SBC) programmes. They shared the belief that donors, SBC practitioners, and the public have a right to expect that research results are reported in ways that can help us understand what works, for whom, why, when, and at what cost.

The result was this guidance document, which can be used for drafting or interpreting reports from the published and gray literature. The checklist emphasises the description of the SBC intervention and rationale for the SBC strategy, choice of outcomes, and methods of creating comparisons. It includes a discussion about the effects, causal attribution, and future implications and generalisability of the results. Checklist items were grouped into three domains: intervention, study design, and discussion.

"These suggestions are a first step toward ensuring that research reports contain sufficient information for documenting lessons learned from SBC programs, synthesizing the evidence base, improving transparency, and drawing attention to the potential rigor of well-designed and implemented SBC studies and programs."