Impact of an entertainment-education television drama on health knowledge and behavior in Bangladesh: An application of propensity score matching

Shabuj Chaya is a weekly television drama broadcast during a 13-week period in Bangladesh in 2000. It used an entertainment- education format to increase health knowledge and to promote visits to health clinic and modern contraceptive use. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how a relatively new statistical technique, propensity score matching in conjunction with structural equation modeling, can be used to obtain an unbiased estimate of changes in health outcomes that can be attributed to exposure to the drama. The analysis is conducted with data from an after-only, cross-sectional survey of 4,492 men and women from the intended audience. The results from propensity score matching approximate what would be expected from a randomized control group design.