Measuring self-efficacy, executive function, and temporal discounting in Kenya.

Kristina Esopo, Daniel Mellow, Catherine Thomas, Hannah Uckat, Justin Abraham, Prachi Jain, Chaning Jang, Nicholas Otis, Michala Riis-Vestergaard, Amanda Starcev, Kate Orkin & Johannes Haushofer

SECTOR

Behavioral Research and Academic Engagements

PROJECT TYPE

Lab experiment

DOI

Location

Kenya

BEHAVIORAL THEME

Behavioral tasks |Self-efficacy

OVERVIEW

Developing countries have low adherence to medical regimens like water chlorination or antenatal and postnatal care, contributing to high infant and child mortality rates. We hypothesize that high levels of stress affect adherence through temporal discounting, self-efficacy, and executive control. Measurement of these constructs in developing countries requires adaptation of existing measures.

THEMATIC AREAS

In the current study, we adapt psychological scales and behavioral tasks, measuring each of these three constructs, for use among adults in Kenya. We translated and back-translated each measure to Kiswahili and conducted cognitive interviewing to establish cultural acceptability, refined existing behavioral tasks, and developed new ones. Then, in a laboratory session lasting 3 h, participants $(N = 511)$ completed the adapted psychological inventories and behavioral tasks. We report the psychometric properties of these measures. We find relatively low reliability and poor correlational evidence between psychological scales and behavioral tasks measuring the same construct, highlighting the challenges of adapting measures across cultures, and suggesting that assays within the same domain may tap distinct underlying processes.