Finding Out More About Girl's Self-Esteem

The Dove Self Esteem Weekend will take place on October 22-24. During this event, people and organizations across the nation are encouraged to hold a weekend of self-esteem building activities. “One hour of your time can make a world of difference in a young girl’s self-esteem,” serves as the inspiring thought for the weekend.

Community members who wish to get involved in this initiative can get involved in many ways, by downloading a guide on how to talk to girls about self-esteem, joining the facebook group, finding a local organization to get involved with such as Girl Scouts, Girls Inc, or Boys and Girls Club of America, and even buy buying a Dove product, one can feel good that part of the proceeds will go to the Self-Esteem fund. Programs like this make consumers feel empowered and connected to the company. It also helps to demonstrate that the company is investing in their well-being.

The weekend activities planned around the nation are truly grass roots. “All events are the sole responsibility of the individual organizer or organization involved. Dove provides resources and suggested activity guides but does not hold the actual events and is not responsible for what takes place at events in connection with this weekend.”

Because this movement is being led by individual people, with the support of Dove, I believe that it is extremely important for an organization like Dove/Unilever to evaluate its success. Part of ensuring the success of the Fund is to track how many community members engage with the program and assess how they felt the program impacted their lives. For the Dove Self-Esteem Weekend event, (which, I am sure a company like Unilever has already begun this process), I would definitely advise having research methods in place to assess how the program was received. Now, this does not mean Dove has to survey every single participant. Rather, they can generate a random sampling reflective of those who participated. This can be done by first having the list of where programs will be taking place across the nation. From that list, Dove can choose to sample a certain percentage of participants. In order to ensure that each type of event in different regions is assessed, the best way to generate this sample is to start with a list of the types of events (individuals, neighborhoods, organizations), and then list them by geographically  

For instance, we could break the up the map by 4 regions (NE, SE, NW, and SW) and then by type of person/people organizing the event (i=individual, n=neighborhood, o=organization).

Right now there are 216 events planned across North America. For our purposes, let’s set make a smaller hypothetical situation, maybe 39.  To generate the sample, we could pick a random starting spot and then systematically select, say, every 5^th place (which would result in a sample size of 8, or about 30%). So let’s say we start at 4.

1.      NE, N

2.      NE, N

3.      NE, N

4.      NE, I

5.      NE, O

6.      NE, O

7.      NE, O

8.      NE, O

9.      NE, O

10.  NE, O

11.  NW, N

12.  NW, N

13.  NW, N

14.  NW, N

15.  NW, O

16.  NW, O

17.  NW, O

18.  NW, O

19.  NW, O

20.  NW, O

21.  NW, O

22.  NW, O

23.  NW, O

24.  NW, I

25.  NW, I

26.  SE, N

27.  SE, N

28.  SE, O

29.  SE, O

30.  SE, O

31.  SE, O

32.  SE, I

33.  SE, I

34.  SW, N

35.  SW, N

36.  SW, O

37.  SW, O

38.  SW, O

39.  SW, I

As you can see, events from each region and type were selected. (NE I, NE O, NW N, NW O, NW I, SE O, SW N, and SW O)

Next week, I’ll discuss operationalizing what we’re trying to find out with our survey. Thanks for reading!

Are you attending a Dove self-esteem event? Write about it below!