Glossary | WatSan Promo Website

Term	Definition
Advocacy	Advances an audience’s belief that a proposed action is good, effective, and useful to address an issue or problem, such as more government funds for improved access to safe drinking water, or supportive policies for changes to septage programs.
Appeal	Extent to which product or service characteristic distinguishes it from competitors.
Attitudes and Beliefs	Assessment of feelings toward and perception about a product, service or behavior.
Attributes	Extent to which product or service's physical components are practical to use.
Audience	Group whose attitudes, behaviors or practices to be modified.
Availability	Extent to which a product or service is found where it needs to be.
Behavior	Habitual actions taken by an individual in the course of their daily routine.
Behavior Analysis	Planned and consistent observation of a target audience’s behaviors and practices. Behavior analysis is the science of systematically observing the practice of an action and clarifying and explaining that action with regard to a communication objective. It serves to: (1) Gather information about the current behavior of the audience regarding a specific problem; (2) Define feasible practices to promote, including understanding the conditions and factors necessary to ensure that the audience will adopt the promoted behavior; and (3) Determine and provide the audience with the necessary conditions or skills to adopt the behavior.
Behavior Change	Convincing a target audience to adopt and replace current behaviors with target behaviors.
Behavior Change Communication	Builds a target audience’s conviction that an action is the best choice and motivates them to try it and adopt it.
Catalyzing	Prompting, motivating or inspiring behavior change through project activities.
Change	Replacement of a target audience’s attitudes, behaviors, knowledge or practices with target attitudes, behaviors, knowledge or practices.
Channel	Local outlets, such as media, organizations and individuals used to disseminate target messages.
Current Behavior	Behaviors actually engaged in by a target audience. This behavior corresponds to what the audience is actually doing.
Customers	Customer is used throughout as a generic term for clients, beneficiaries, citizens and customers.
Enabling Environment	Local conditions that promote change and provide information, resources and services that help the target audience sustain those changes.
Expectations	Belief that product, service or behavior will have desired outcome and fulfill purpose.
Feasible Behavior	Behavior a target audience can realistically be expected to adopt—based on local resources and pre-existing attitudes and practices—after a behavior change communication activity. A feasible practice is the most realistic or doable behavior for a target audience to enact after the intervention(s). After careful analysis of the current behavior, one can propose specific changes that are in accordance with what the audience will find acceptable and will feel they are capable of doing. It often times bares little or no similarity to one’s original ideal behavior, but will reap the desired behavior change.
Hygiene Practices	Practices involving hand washing, clean and proper use of latrine facilities, and use of safe drinking water practices, just to name a few.
Ideal Behavior	Behavior that generate the best results for the target audience. It usually corresponds to the first behavior conceived of by program designers as the optimum. Ideal behavior is usually a challenge to put into practice.
Information and Education	Increases a target audience’s awareness, understanding and knowledge about the facts on a particular issue and problem.
Infrastructure	Local resources, services and utilities that provide the foundation for community maintenance and grow.
Intention	Individual’s plan to perform a promoted practice, behavior, business and construction.
Knowledge	Facts accumulated through learning or training.
Media	Communication outlets in a region used to disseminate information to inhabitants of that region.
Mobilization	Allows target audience members to express how they feel about performing the action, discuss it with other community members, and identify how they will continue or start to practice the action.
Practices	Habitual actions shared by a community and based on local traditions, beliefs and resources in a given region.
Product	Encompasses any item used to promote a behavior or function as part of a service, such as a bar of soap, a basin and a plastic water main pipe.
Promotion	Disseminating target messages and encouraging target behaviors in a target audience.
Research Instruments or Tools	Collection of questionnaires, topic guides, surveys or observation checklist used to collect data for design, monitoring and/or evaluation.
Sanitation	Local infrastructure used to ensure healthy and hygienic conditions in a region – safe feces disposal and proper use and maintenance of latrines.
Sanitation Marketing	Use of social marketing and communication techniques to bring about change in community and individual sanitation practices.
Self-eficacy	Confidence in one’s own ability to perform practice, behavior, business and construction
Skills	Set of steps needed to perform and/or facilitate performance of promoted practice, behavior, business and construction.
Social Marketing	Persuades a target audience that a proposed action is the best choice and prompts them to try it and adopt it.
Social Norm	Behavioral standards that exist in a community for an individual to follow.
Social Support	Emotional (what individual/business/agency does to make others valued), instrumental (tangible help that an individual/business/agency receives/gives), and informational (help that an individual/business/agency gets/offers through information).
Target Audience	Includes the consumer, client, customer, and beneficiary of research and of a promotion effort. For research, the target audience is generally broader. For a promotion effort, the target audience is specifically defined and segmented.
Threat	Perceived danger to product, service, practice and behavior (severity and susceptibility).
Training	Training strengthens a target audience’s ability to perform an action. It includes organized dissemination of information and skills.
Water	A natural resource used for sanitation, (e.g., taps and toilets), for health, (e.g., drinking water and washing) and as a local resource, (e.g., rivers and ponds).
Willingness and Ability to Pay/Provide	Individual’s intention and capacity to pay or provide for a product, service and practice.