Counterpart International, a global development nonprofit, has released our survey-based assessment of Support to the Electoral Process (STEP), a civic engagement program funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development in which Counterpart and its local partners instructed more than 3.3 million Afghan citizens in the principles of democracy, civil rights, the rule of law and the structure of government.

The report includes an extensive analysis of STEP’s impacts, based on statistical analysis of covariance structure in survey samples of treatment and non-treatment groups in 12 Afghan provinces. If finds that the STEP program had a significant, positive effect on participants’ civic orientation and political and community involvement. The quality of the training sessions, including ratings of teaching materials, topics, instructors and teaching strategies, was a key predictor of successful results, along with security and development levels in the locales in which STEP programs were held.

Findings of the study are contextualized through a detailed review of the literature on best practices in civic education, and the report includes recommendations on how to achieve the maximum positive impact of future civic engagement programs.

Langer Research Associates conducted the literature review, designed the survey questionnaire, analyzed the data and wrote the Counterpart-STEP report, as well as co-designing the sampling plan with D3 Systems Inc., which managed data collection and processing via the Afghan Center for Socio-Economic and Opinion Research (ACSOR) in Kabul.

See the study here on Counterpart International’s website.