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Population

Health

Well-Being

Malawi Behavioral Biases Study (MBBS)

Quick Facts

Location
Lilongwe, Malawi

Research Area

A randomized controlled trial with 782 women, with follow-ups through 2022

Leads 
Mahesh Karra (Columbia/PopFam)

Partners
IDinsight and AFIDEP are prospective consortium collaborators as we seek to build and expand this trial in the next phase

The Specifics

What we are doing 

What are doing

We're testing how the design of family planning counseling shapes women's choices - specifically, whether presenting a smaller, targeted set of contraceptive methods (based on a woman's stated preferences) and whether involving husbands or partners in counseling changes what method women choose and whether they follow through on it.

What We Learned

Learnings

Targeted counseling made women less likely to end up using their own originally stated ideal method - a reminder that simplifying choices doesn't automatically help women act on their preferences. Involving husbands in counseling increased the likelihood that women used their stated ideal method, but likely because that "ideal" came to reflect a blend of her preferences and her husband's rather than hers alone - a real trade-off between realizing a preference and preserving individual autonomy that we think is important for program design.

The Impact

Impact

The trial protocol is published in JMIR Research Protocols, and the main findings in the Journal of Development Economics (2025). The findings are shaping how we and our partners think about the role of male engagement in family planning counseling design, and policy briefs have been shared with Malawi's Ministry of Health and Reproductive Health Directorate.

Research & Publications

5 April 2021

User-Centered Counseling and Male Involvement in Contraceptive Decision Making: Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial

February 2025

User-centered approaches to contraceptive counseling: Experimental evidence from urban Malawi

Author(s)
Mahesh Karra,  Kexin Zhang

Author(s)
Mahesh Karra, 
 Kexin Zhang

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21 November 2025

Replication Data for "User-Centered Approaches to Contraceptive Counseling: Experimental Evidence from Urban Malawi"

Author(s)
Mahesh Karra, 
 Kexin Zhang

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