Rehabilitative and Social Medicine Unit, Department of Community Medicine, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria.
Centre for Child and Adolescent Mental Health, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria.
PLoS One. 2023 May 15;18(5):e0285902. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0285902. eCollection 2023.
Child marriage hinders progress toward population health and development goals. Cost effective interventions that address the root causes of child marriage are needed to speed progress toward ending the practice. Nigeria is home to the largest number of married girls in Africa and many of these girls are members of the Hausa ethnic group, making efforts to tackle this issue particularly urgent among this population.
Radio programs have the potential to inform large numbers of people about the harms of child marriage and change their support for the practice at low cost. We will develop a series of radio programs that address gender inequitable attitudes that motivate child marriage among Hausa communities in Ibadan, Nigeria. The content of the series will be based on input from the Hausa community. A baseline survey that measures knowledge of and support for child marriage will be conducted among randomly selected samples of Hausa adults in two cities: Ibadan, which will serve as the intervention site, and Akure, the control site. The radio programs will then air on Hausa-language stations in Ibadan over a three-month period, with the aim of informing persons of the potential harms of child marriage and reducing their support for the practice. A follow-up survey with the same individuals surveyed at baseline will be conducted in both cities. We will measure the impact of this intervention by comparing changes in these outcomes over time in the intervention site (Ibadan) with changes in the same outcomes in the control site (Akure).
This study will investigate whether a series of targeted radio programs can reduce support for child marriage. The intervention is readily scalable and cost-effective and, if it effectively shifts attitudes toward child marriage, could represent a promising way of addressing child marriage in Nigeria.
童婚阻碍了人口健康和发展目标的实现。需要采取具有成本效益的干预措施，从根本上解决童婚问题，以加快消除这一做法的步伐。尼日利亚是非洲童婚女孩人数最多的国家，其中许多女孩是豪萨族的成员，因此，解决这一问题对于该族裔尤为紧迫。
广播节目具有以低成本向大量民众宣传童婚危害并改变其对童婚支持态度的潜力。我们将制作一系列广播节目，针对豪萨社区中导致童婚的性别不平等态度。该系列节目的内容将基于豪萨社区的意见。我们将在伊巴丹和阿库雷两个城市中，随机抽取豪萨族成年人样本，开展基线调查，以衡量他们对童婚的了解程度和支持情况。伊巴丹将作为干预点，阿库雷将作为对照点。随后，该广播节目将在伊巴丹的豪萨语广播电台播出三个月，旨在让民众了解童婚的潜在危害并减少对童婚的支持。我们将对同一人群进行基线调查的随访调查。我们将通过比较干预点（伊巴丹）和对照点（阿库雷）在同一时期这些结果的变化，来衡量该干预措施的影响。
本研究将调查一系列有针对性的广播节目是否能减少对童婚的支持。该干预措施易于扩展且具有成本效益，如果能有效改变对童婚的态度，可能是解决尼日利亚童婚问题的一种有前途的方法。
