Beyond Awareness: How Personalized Information Empowers Refugees to Recognize Exploitation and Seek Help

Overview

While there are many qualitative and quantitative studies looking at the role of information in the lives of vulnerable populations, there has long been a dearth of rigorous research on how responsive information services (the delivery of information that responds directly to the questions posed by crisis-affected people) impacts people’s knowledge, coping abilities, and general well-being. An independent study1 conducted by University College London (UCL) and the Immigration Policy Lab (IPL) at ETH Zurich in 2022 and 2023 made notable strides to bridge this gap and produced results that have important implications for humanitarian actors seeking to support crisis-affected and displaced populations with information. The research looked at a Signpost program delivered in partnership between Refugee.Info Greece (a program of IRC Hellas) and their local partner Mobile Info Team (MIT) with a representative sample of 1,707 refugees and asylum seekers in Greece. This study marked the first time an RCT (Randomized Control Trial) has been conducted on a Signpost program.

Methods

The researchers collected baseline data to ascertain existing knowledge of exploitation under Greek law, confidence in coping with violence, as well as existing levels of access to services, mental distress, and integration across a comprehensive range of dimensions. After five months, they randomly assigned research participants to three groups. The first group was prompted to visit the Refugee.Info website, the second group was prompted to ask questions by sending a message through social media to MIT’s case workers team, and the third group served as the control, receiving messages just to maintain contact. Three months later, the research team reached back out to all three groups to collect endline data.

Findings

The study found that that information provided through Signpost improved knowledge about what constitutes labor exploitation (including trafficking), as well as ability to cope with violence (measured as the knowledge on how to seek help after experiencing violence and likelihood of speaking to others in their community about it). The IPL/UCL research team also found that while people are more likely to engage with online content on a website than to reach out directly with questions on WhatsApp, the personalized information delivered via chat had a greater impact. This suggests that the most powerful approach is one that allows people to engage with content independently while simultaneously offering the opportunity to ask questions and receive a personalized response.

Limitations

Further research is needed to explore how responsive information services can improve other outcomes including mental distress and integration, and whether the findings hold in other contexts where displacement is more recent or when outcomes can be measured over a longer period of time.

Looking Ahead

These findings support the approach taken by Signpost and similar initiatives that pair information content that can be accessed publicly with individualized communication and support. In the next year the Signpost team hopes to continue to work with independent academic partners to conduct additional research to better understand the impacts of this model, as well as cost efficiency research.

1 The working paper from the study can be found here.

2 The study included both legal information and information about services.