Pilot studies
We conducted two pilot studies to examine whether our interventions and measures would be appropriate for policymakers in the NWT. The first pilot study included 20 policymakers who were randomly assigned to one of four groups. In the control group, we emailed policymakers to invite them to sign a public pledge with a link to a website (On average, 35% of the policymakers across the four conditions clicked on the link to the website, but none of them signed the public pledge. This result gave us pause in focusing on pledge signing as the primary behavior to change. Policymakers may have been hesitant to sign the pledge because they did not have enough information on the topic to make a decision. With these considerations in mind, we conducted a second pilot study with several changes to the study design. First, we reduced the number of conditions from four to two (personal stories vs. control), to maximize the number of participants in each condition. Second, we shifted the focus of pledge signing to attending an online policy briefing. We reasoned that attending an online policy briefing may be less consequential than signing a public pledge and it also provides more information to policymakers.In the second pilot study, we sent an email invitation (as well as additional reminder emails) to another set of 20 policymakers to attend an online policy briefing where we gave a presentation on gender and policymaking. At the end of the briefing, we sent them the link to the pledge website. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups. In the control group, the email contained an invitation to attend an online policy briefing and a Zoom link. In the treatment group, the email also contained two personal stories of how women have been impacted by policies. Out of 10 participants in the treatment group, one participant attended the briefing, but none signed the pledge. No participants from the control group attended the briefing or signed the pledge. While response rate and attendance were low, we were encouraged that at least one policymaker attended the briefing. Thus, we chose to focus on attendance rate as our primary behavioral measure based on these pilots.