Consulting Options

Consulting for social impact

We provide applied research and advisory services to clients seeking to encourage new positive behaviors or dislodge problematic norms in different social groups. We have worked with international development agencies, NGOs and governments around the world, from Peru to Nigeria to India. Our unique framework allows us to measure, diagnose and change the motivational forces that support collective norms and behaviors at scale.

Consulting for organizational impact

We work with companies to measure and change organizational norms and group behavior to improve a wide range of organizational metrics. Our services allow companies to identify the reasons behind problematic norms and behaviors, such as failures of transparency, discrimination, or a culture of burnout, and to dislodge them. And while organizational norms and culture are often approached with fuzzy concepts, our unique approach allows to find clear and feasible paths to change for leadership and teams to pursue.

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Learn More About our Unique Approach Here

Projects and Trainings Around the Globe

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Consulting Locations

Previous Project Sponsors

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Consulting Highlights

Child Marriage and Malnutrition in Mali
In collaboration with UNICEF-Mali, PennSoNG is engaged in nine-month study to understand the factors behind the high rates of child marriage (under 18 years old) and malnutrition (under 2 years old) in the Kayes and Sikasso regions of Mali. The study employs a unique social norms survey delivered to roughly 6,000 Malians, including mothers, fathers, and grandparents, who often serve as decision-makers on marriage and nutrition questions in the household. With the support o...
La Alianza
Tailoring our social norms workshop to issues around abortion and women’s access to care, PennSONG worked with La Alianza to provide a training to build capacity of local groups in Mexico City.
Social Norms and Sanitation in India
Working with the Gates Foundation, we are in the midst of a three-year study analyzing Social Networks and Social Norms related to open defecation in the Bihar and Tamil Nadu regions of India. Developing culturally appropriate social measures and survey questions, we are in the process of unpacking the core social motivators for a host of OD-related behaviors. Credit for the above image goes to Elisha George. You can read a report covering the first phase of this projec...
Sustainability Check, UNICEF Pakistan
Partnering with UNICEF Pakistan, we provided social norms training and technical research support as we developed and implemented new WASH-specific social norms measures into their 2016 Sustainability Check. Before starting the work of developing measures, we first designed and facilitated a training course on social norms in a WASH sustainability context to ensure everyone on the project had a clear grasp of the same concepts. Following the workshop, we worked with UNICEF...
Corruption: Chatham House
PennSONG collaborated with Chatham House to diagnose what drives corrupt behavior in Nigeria and learn about the types of beliefs that support practices understood to be corrupt. As part of the project, PennSONG created social norms measures and survey questions for a national household survey conducted  by local partners. Analyzing the results with Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics, PennSONG and Chatham house jointly produced a report detailing the findings. You can...
Women & Children: UNICEF Office of Research
As part of the UNICEF Office of Research’s project on the Multi-Country Study on the Drivers of Violence, PennSONG has provided regional social norms trainings in Zimbabwe, Viet Nam and Peru on on the intersection between social norms and violence. Working with UNICEF, PennSONG offers Social Norms Manuals for each region available on our Research page.