Praekelt.org, in partnership with Wits University and Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), has launched the #SafeSigns digital chatbot at the Sexual Violence Research Initiative Forum in Cancun, following a three-year study showing a low-cost digital intervention significantly reduced young women’s exposure to past-month intimate partner violence.
South Africa has one of the highest prevalences of intimate partner violence (IPV) or any relationship behaviour that causes physical, sexual, or psychological harm. Like many places, young women in South Africa often feel that violence is a normal part of relationships, and they sometimes have trouble recognizing signs of unsafe or unhealthy partners. Despite the great need for interventions for young women, few low-cost intervention options have been proven to reduce IPV.
Against this backdrop, Praekelt.org, Wits, and BIT piloted an interactive digital platform to help young women navigate their relationships safely and confidentially using Whatsapp, a popular messaging platform.
#SafeSigns uses evidence-based behavioural strategies — delivered as a two-way interactive conversation — to help young women reflect on their relationship power, build skills, plan for safety, and learn coping and communication techniques.
The study used best practice interaction design, leveraging relatable characters, audience-appropriate messaging like emojis and a gamified user journey. An advisory committee of young women, representative of the target audience, was consulted throughout the design process, giving insights into the user experience, local language choices and the chatbot persona.
To enhance safety, every young woman was offered a direct line to chat with a live counsellor, and 4,5% opted into this additional service.
In a trial of 19 638 women aged 18-24 recruited from across South Africa, #SafeSigns significantly increased gender equitable beliefs and skills protecting against IPV exposure. In a first for the field, the low-cost digital intervention significantly reduced exposure to relationship violence three months after completing the program (a 9,6% reduction, p<0.001).
Beyond making women safer, access to the chatbot greatly improved attitudes about gender equity in relationships. Those in the gamified chatbot arm were significantly better at identifying harmful relationship behaviours. The intervention neither harmed nor improved mental health compared to controls – suggesting this work may need to be augmented or complemented with other services to reduce depressive symptoms.
While this intervention alone cannot solve this complex issue, it’s an important addition to the prevention toolkit, particularly in low-resource settings. It has the potential to reach young audiences at scale and to help identify users who may benefit from more intensive, personalised psychosocial support.
The chatbot has recently been packaged open-source to offer implementation partners the opportunity to create and launch their version to improve outcomes relating to sexual health and IPV.