Objective Behavioral Metric via Voucher Redemption
RCTClinical Trial
Evaluations of adolescent sexual health programs frequently rely on self-reported survey responses regarding sexual practices, which are highly susceptible to social desirability bias and recall inaccuracy.
Picture this
Giving participants a trackable ticket for a real item at a local shop acts as a real-world test of intention. By recording who actually walks into a clinic to claim physical health items, evaluators measure true behavioral demand without asking sensitive or easily faked survey questions.
What the evidence says
Treatment group students demonstrated a 28% redemption rate compared to 18% in the control group, representing a 55% relative increase in condom demand (p = 0.07).
- Who was studied
- N = 3,358 human high school students in Colombia who provided contact details for e-voucher distribution.
- How
- Field experiment six months post-intervention delivering e-vouchers (via email/SMS) for 6 free condoms (US $5 market value) redeemable at local health clinics, matched via unique voucher identification numbers.
What to do
Distribute coded, redeemable vouchers for physical health commodities to objectively verify participant behavioral change in sensitive field evaluations.
From the source
"The condom voucher makes it possible to avoid obvious problems with self-reported sexual behavior data, and follows O'Donnell et al. (1995) and Thornton (2008)."
Do Information Technologies Improve Teenagers’ Sexual Education? Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Colombia