The World Bank working paper titled Shifting Social Norms to Reduce Open Defecation in Rural India made available online in Washington recently, explores a new method for measuring and using social norms to increase and maintain high rates of toilet use. It is based on a small survey of 205 Indian families in one district of Uttar Pradesh conducted in early 2017.
The introductory section of the study quotes third party data which is outdated (mostly from 2014 or earlier) while not clarifying these sources adequately. This data, while used in the report, does not capture the findings of the Bank study in any way, since the study was conducted in 2017. The authors and other experts are now re-examining the data sources and text, and accordingly, we have removed the working paper from the Bank website in Washington to avoid any miscommunication.
