Abstract
Background: We evaluated Girl Empower – an intervention that aimed to equip adolescent girls with the skills to make healthy, strategic life choices and to stay safe from sexual abuse using a cluster-randomized controlled trial with three arms: control, Girl Empower (GE), and GE+. Methods: GE delivered a life skills curriculum to girls aged 13–14 in Liberia, facilitated by local female mentors. In the GE+ variation, a cash incentive payment was offered to caregivers for girls’ participation in the program. We evaluated the impact of the program on seven pre-specified domains using standardized indices: sexual violence, schooling, sexual and reproductive health (SRH), psychosocial wellbeing, gender attitudes, life skills, and protective factors.
Findings: Participation rates in the program were high in both GE and GE+, with the average participant attending 28 out of 32 sessions. At 24 months, the standardized effects of both GE and GE+, compared to control, on sexual violence, schooling, psychosocial wellbeing, and protective factors were small (ß, ? 0.11 standard deviations [SD]) and not statistically significant at the 95% level of confidence. However, we found positive standardized effects on Gender Attitudes (GE: ß, 0.206 SD, p<0.05; GE+: ß, 0.228 SD, p<0.05), Life Skills (GE: ß, 0.224 SD, p<0.05; GE+: ß, 0.289 SD, p<0.01), and SRH (GE: ß, 0.244 SD, p<0.01; GE+: ß, 0.372 SD, p<0.01; Ftest for GE ¼ GE+: p ¼ 0.075).
Interpretation: Girl Empower led to sustained improvements in several important domains, including SRH, but did
not reduce sexual violence among the target population.
The study was pre-registered at: Guimond, Marie et al. 2019. "Girl Empower." AEA RCT Registry. March 20. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.2717-5.0.
