Author: Ambler, Kate
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 46
Book Description
Accurate understanding of peoples’ livelihoods activities is needed to inform effective policy. Existing evidence relies heavily on studies that use designated respondents to provide information about their household members, imposing significant costs on these respondents along with possible distortions in the data. In rural Ghana, we randomize the order that household members are asked about and estimate that response fatigue leads to undercounting of labor activities by 8% on average. Women are twice as impacted as men while youth are four times as impacted as older adults, distorting both within-household and population wide comparisons. These biases result from women and youth being listed systematically later in rosters and stronger effects of fatigue for them, conditional on roster position. The implications of our results extend to other topics of enquiry as well, wherever similar repetitive survey structures are deployed, such as birth records, plot-level inputs, and household consumption and expenditures.
Are we done yet? Response fatigue and rural livelihoods
Author: Ambler, Kate
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 46
Book Description
Accurate understanding of peoples’ livelihoods activities is needed to inform effective policy. Existing evidence relies heavily on studies that use designated respondents to provide information about their household members, imposing significant costs on these respondents along with possible distortions in the data. In rural Ghana, we randomize the order that household members are asked about and estimate that response fatigue leads to undercounting of labor activities by 8% on average. Women are twice as impacted as men while youth are four times as impacted as older adults, distorting both within-household and population wide comparisons. These biases result from women and youth being listed systematically later in rosters and stronger effects of fatigue for them, conditional on roster position. The implications of our results extend to other topics of enquiry as well, wherever similar repetitive survey structures are deployed, such as birth records, plot-level inputs, and household consumption and expenditures.
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 46
Book Description
Accurate understanding of peoples’ livelihoods activities is needed to inform effective policy. Existing evidence relies heavily on studies that use designated respondents to provide information about their household members, imposing significant costs on these respondents along with possible distortions in the data. In rural Ghana, we randomize the order that household members are asked about and estimate that response fatigue leads to undercounting of labor activities by 8% on average. Women are twice as impacted as men while youth are four times as impacted as older adults, distorting both within-household and population wide comparisons. These biases result from women and youth being listed systematically later in rosters and stronger effects of fatigue for them, conditional on roster position. The implications of our results extend to other topics of enquiry as well, wherever similar repetitive survey structures are deployed, such as birth records, plot-level inputs, and household consumption and expenditures.
Assessing response fatigue in phone surveys: Experimental evidence on dietary diversity in Ethiopia
Author: Abay, Kibrom A.
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 28
Book Description
The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred interest in the use of remote data collection techniques, including phone surveys, in developing country contexts. This interest has sparked new methodological work focusing on the advantages and disadvantages of different forms of remote data collection, the use of incentives to increase response rates and how to address sample representativeness. By contrast, attention given to associated response fatigue and its implications remains limited. To assess this, we designed and implemented an experiment that randomized the placement of a survey module on women’s dietary diversity in the survey instrument. We also examine potential differential vulnerabilities to fatigue across food groups and respondents. We find that delaying the timing of mothers’ food consumption module by 15 minutes leads to 8-17 percent decrease in the dietary diversity score and a 28 percent decrease in the number of mothers who consumed a minimum of four dietary groups. This is driven by underreporting of infrequently consumed foods; the experimentally induced delay in the timing of mothers’ food consumption module led to a 40 and 11 percent decrease in the reporting of consumption of animal source foods, and fruits and vegetables, respectively. Our results are robust to changes in model specification and pass falsification tests. Responses by older and less educated mothers and those from larger households are more vulnerable to measurement error due to fatigue.
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 28
Book Description
The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred interest in the use of remote data collection techniques, including phone surveys, in developing country contexts. This interest has sparked new methodological work focusing on the advantages and disadvantages of different forms of remote data collection, the use of incentives to increase response rates and how to address sample representativeness. By contrast, attention given to associated response fatigue and its implications remains limited. To assess this, we designed and implemented an experiment that randomized the placement of a survey module on women’s dietary diversity in the survey instrument. We also examine potential differential vulnerabilities to fatigue across food groups and respondents. We find that delaying the timing of mothers’ food consumption module by 15 minutes leads to 8-17 percent decrease in the dietary diversity score and a 28 percent decrease in the number of mothers who consumed a minimum of four dietary groups. This is driven by underreporting of infrequently consumed foods; the experimentally induced delay in the timing of mothers’ food consumption module led to a 40 and 11 percent decrease in the reporting of consumption of animal source foods, and fruits and vegetables, respectively. Our results are robust to changes in model specification and pass falsification tests. Responses by older and less educated mothers and those from larger households are more vulnerable to measurement error due to fatigue.
How happy are you? It depends on when asked …
Author: Tauseef, Salauddin
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 22
Book Description
Subjective well-being measures are increasingly applied in quantitative economic analyses intended to elicit non-monetary wellbeing of individuals. However, the subjective nature of this evaluation means that measurement and comparison may be confounded by differences in context or may be sensitive to the implementation modality. We use two rounds of a large-scale panel phone survey data from Myanmar to explore whether the randomized placement of a happiness module – either at the beginning or at the end of the survey – affects respondents’ answers. Respondents who were asked the happiness module at the end are more likely to be happy – an increase of 7 percentage points – compared to those who are asked at the beginning of the survey. This result is consistent using different models and robust to inclusion of enumerator fixed effects and other enumerator and survey characteristics. A related question on worry in the same module yields similar findings. Results also sustain over the two rounds of survey in which we conducted the experiment.
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 22
Book Description
Subjective well-being measures are increasingly applied in quantitative economic analyses intended to elicit non-monetary wellbeing of individuals. However, the subjective nature of this evaluation means that measurement and comparison may be confounded by differences in context or may be sensitive to the implementation modality. We use two rounds of a large-scale panel phone survey data from Myanmar to explore whether the randomized placement of a happiness module – either at the beginning or at the end of the survey – affects respondents’ answers. Respondents who were asked the happiness module at the end are more likely to be happy – an increase of 7 percentage points – compared to those who are asked at the beginning of the survey. This result is consistent using different models and robust to inclusion of enumerator fixed effects and other enumerator and survey characteristics. A related question on worry in the same module yields similar findings. Results also sustain over the two rounds of survey in which we conducted the experiment.
Women and youth in Myanmar agriculture
Author: Lambrecht, Isabel
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 38
Book Description
Women’s and youth’s roles in agriculture vary across contexts and over time. Limited quantitative information is available on this topic from Southeast Asia in general, and particularly from Myanmar. We use nationally representative data to document women’s and youth’s involvement in agriculture in rural Myanmar. First, we show that women and youth contribute substantially to agriculture. Women in farm households perform 39 percent of household farm labour days, and 43 percent of agricultural wage workers are women. Twenty-seven percent of adults performing household agricultural work are youth and 22 percent of agricultural wage workers are youth. Yet, women’s farm wages are 29 percent lower than men’s farm wages. Youth’s farm wages are 17 percent lower than farm wages of non-youth for men, but we don’t find similar wage differences for women. Second, we find a significant gender gap in land rights, but the share of women who have land rights is still sizable. Nineteen percent of adult men are documented landowners compared to seven percent of adult women. Few youth have land rights, but the likelihood increases with age. Third, we explore cropping patterns. No crops are grown exclusively by men or women, but rice is more often and vegetables are less often cultivated by households where men are the sole agricultural decision makers. Finally, we focus on access to credit. Women receive loans less often than men (21 percent vs. 26 percent) and youth rarely receive loans (4 percent). Women’s loans are more often aimed at alleviating basic needs, such as food and health expenditures. Men’s loans are more often aimed at investment in productive activities, especially farming. The evidence suggests that including men, women and youth equally in agricultural projects and policy making is critical to advance equity and achieve development goals.
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 38
Book Description
Women’s and youth’s roles in agriculture vary across contexts and over time. Limited quantitative information is available on this topic from Southeast Asia in general, and particularly from Myanmar. We use nationally representative data to document women’s and youth’s involvement in agriculture in rural Myanmar. First, we show that women and youth contribute substantially to agriculture. Women in farm households perform 39 percent of household farm labour days, and 43 percent of agricultural wage workers are women. Twenty-seven percent of adults performing household agricultural work are youth and 22 percent of agricultural wage workers are youth. Yet, women’s farm wages are 29 percent lower than men’s farm wages. Youth’s farm wages are 17 percent lower than farm wages of non-youth for men, but we don’t find similar wage differences for women. Second, we find a significant gender gap in land rights, but the share of women who have land rights is still sizable. Nineteen percent of adult men are documented landowners compared to seven percent of adult women. Few youth have land rights, but the likelihood increases with age. Third, we explore cropping patterns. No crops are grown exclusively by men or women, but rice is more often and vegetables are less often cultivated by households where men are the sole agricultural decision makers. Finally, we focus on access to credit. Women receive loans less often than men (21 percent vs. 26 percent) and youth rarely receive loans (4 percent). Women’s loans are more often aimed at alleviating basic needs, such as food and health expenditures. Men’s loans are more often aimed at investment in productive activities, especially farming. The evidence suggests that including men, women and youth equally in agricultural projects and policy making is critical to advance equity and achieve development goals.
Methodologies for researching feminisation of agriculture what do they tell us?
Author: Farnworth, Cathy Rozel
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 33
Book Description
An increasing body of literature suggests that agriculture is “feminizing” in many low and middle-income countries. Definitions of feminisation of agriculture vary, as do interpretations of what drives the expansion of women’s roles in agriculture over time. Understanding whether, how, and why feminisation of agriculture is occurring, and finding ways to properly understand and document this process, requires effective research methodologies capable of producing nuanced data. This article builds on five research projects that set out to deepen narratives of feminisation of agriculture by empirically exploring the dynamics and impacts of diverse processes of feminisation—or masculinisation—of agriculture on gender relations in agriculture and food systems. To contribute to the development of effective research methodologies, the researchers working on these projects associate the insights they have derived in their empirical research with the methodologies they have used. They reflect on how their methodological innovations enabled them to obtain new, or more nuanced, insights into processes of feminisation of agriculture. A first insight is that the definition of ‘feminisation of agriculture’ is a decisive factor in determining the evidence we produce on the process. Second, the feminisation of agriculture should be understood as a nonlinear continuum. Research methodologies need to be capable of capturing dynamics, complexity, as well as multiple and diverse context—and time—specific drivers. Third, bias in data can arise from gender norms which mediate whether women are acknowledged by wider society as farmers in their own right. Such norms may result in significant underestimations of women’s roles in agriculture. This observation warrants a critical awareness that data used to measure or proxy aspects of feminisation of agriculture may reflect such biases. Finally, some research methodologies can be useful to identify and leverage entry points to support women’s agency and empowerment in processes of feminisation of agriculture.
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 33
Book Description
An increasing body of literature suggests that agriculture is “feminizing” in many low and middle-income countries. Definitions of feminisation of agriculture vary, as do interpretations of what drives the expansion of women’s roles in agriculture over time. Understanding whether, how, and why feminisation of agriculture is occurring, and finding ways to properly understand and document this process, requires effective research methodologies capable of producing nuanced data. This article builds on five research projects that set out to deepen narratives of feminisation of agriculture by empirically exploring the dynamics and impacts of diverse processes of feminisation—or masculinisation—of agriculture on gender relations in agriculture and food systems. To contribute to the development of effective research methodologies, the researchers working on these projects associate the insights they have derived in their empirical research with the methodologies they have used. They reflect on how their methodological innovations enabled them to obtain new, or more nuanced, insights into processes of feminisation of agriculture. A first insight is that the definition of ‘feminisation of agriculture’ is a decisive factor in determining the evidence we produce on the process. Second, the feminisation of agriculture should be understood as a nonlinear continuum. Research methodologies need to be capable of capturing dynamics, complexity, as well as multiple and diverse context—and time—specific drivers. Third, bias in data can arise from gender norms which mediate whether women are acknowledged by wider society as farmers in their own right. Such norms may result in significant underestimations of women’s roles in agriculture. This observation warrants a critical awareness that data used to measure or proxy aspects of feminisation of agriculture may reflect such biases. Finally, some research methodologies can be useful to identify and leverage entry points to support women’s agency and empowerment in processes of feminisation of agriculture.
Measuring land rental market participation in smallholder agriculture can survey design innovations improve land market participation statistics?
Author: Abate, Gashaw Tadesse
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 41
Book Description
The emergence of rural land rental markets in Sub-Saharan Africa is recognized as a key component of the region’s ongoing economic transformation. However, the evidence base on land market participation relies on survey-derived measures, which do not always cohere when compared and triangulated, suggesting the possibility of non-trivial measurement error. We report the results of a priming and list experiments designed to shed light on a persistent mystery in rural household survey data from Africa: why there are so many fewer self-reported landlords (renters-out) than tenants (renters-in)? Our design addresses two hypotheses using experimental data from Ethiopia. First, rented-out and rented-in land may be systematically underreported because enumerators and respondents are typically primed to emphasize parcels that are actively managed/cultivated by the household. Second, rented or sharecropped-out land may be systematically underreported because of respondents’ reluctance to acknowledge an activity for which public disclosure may have negative repercussions. We address the first hypothesis with a priming experiment by exposing a random subset of respondents to a nudge that explicitly reminded them to fully account for all land, including rented/sharecropped-in and rented/sharecropped-out. We address the second hypothesis with a double-list experiment, designed to elicit true rates of land renting and sharecropping-out. We find that nudging induces about 4 percentage points increase (or 13% in relative terms) in the share of households participating in renting in or sharecropping-in practices but has negligible effects on reported rates of renting and sharecropping-out. Interestingly, our list experiment indicates much higher revealed rates of renting-out (14-15%) than is reflected in the nominal parcel-roster responses (3%). The magnitude of the latter finding fully explains the apparent difference in renting in versus renting-out rates derived from the regular parcel roster responses. These results indicate that efforts to document land market participation rate and associated impacts must overcome large systematic reporting biases.
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 41
Book Description
The emergence of rural land rental markets in Sub-Saharan Africa is recognized as a key component of the region’s ongoing economic transformation. However, the evidence base on land market participation relies on survey-derived measures, which do not always cohere when compared and triangulated, suggesting the possibility of non-trivial measurement error. We report the results of a priming and list experiments designed to shed light on a persistent mystery in rural household survey data from Africa: why there are so many fewer self-reported landlords (renters-out) than tenants (renters-in)? Our design addresses two hypotheses using experimental data from Ethiopia. First, rented-out and rented-in land may be systematically underreported because enumerators and respondents are typically primed to emphasize parcels that are actively managed/cultivated by the household. Second, rented or sharecropped-out land may be systematically underreported because of respondents’ reluctance to acknowledge an activity for which public disclosure may have negative repercussions. We address the first hypothesis with a priming experiment by exposing a random subset of respondents to a nudge that explicitly reminded them to fully account for all land, including rented/sharecropped-in and rented/sharecropped-out. We address the second hypothesis with a double-list experiment, designed to elicit true rates of land renting and sharecropping-out. We find that nudging induces about 4 percentage points increase (or 13% in relative terms) in the share of households participating in renting in or sharecropping-in practices but has negligible effects on reported rates of renting and sharecropping-out. Interestingly, our list experiment indicates much higher revealed rates of renting-out (14-15%) than is reflected in the nominal parcel-roster responses (3%). The magnitude of the latter finding fully explains the apparent difference in renting in versus renting-out rates derived from the regular parcel roster responses. These results indicate that efforts to document land market participation rate and associated impacts must overcome large systematic reporting biases.
Labor (mis?)measurement in agriculture
Author: Ambler, Kate
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 33
Book Description
Livelihoods are changing rapidly in rural areas. Measuring and categorizing peoples’ labor activities in relation to the agricultural sector is important for understanding income earning opportunities and designing effective policy. Conventional data collection methods ask about individuals’ main work activities over the past year. Descriptions are recorded in the field, postcoded, and eventually categorized. This approach is costly to collect, fatiguing for respondents, and may create distortions. We show that a more direct approach, asking respondents to categorize their major work activities themselves, provides similar resulting data despite some caveats and lessons for best enumeration practices. We compare these main activities to a series of yes/no questions about participation in a set of specific work tasks. We find a 12% incidence of “missing” work, whereby individuals who reported participation in at least one but did not have any recorded major activities. Looking by sector of work, women and youth are disproportionately more likely to have agricultural contributions “missed,” while we find no corresponding bias in undercounting of non-agricultural work. Finally, we test the effect of randomly positioning the task-based questions before the listing of major activities but do not find significant effects on the number or type of activities reported.
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 33
Book Description
Livelihoods are changing rapidly in rural areas. Measuring and categorizing peoples’ labor activities in relation to the agricultural sector is important for understanding income earning opportunities and designing effective policy. Conventional data collection methods ask about individuals’ main work activities over the past year. Descriptions are recorded in the field, postcoded, and eventually categorized. This approach is costly to collect, fatiguing for respondents, and may create distortions. We show that a more direct approach, asking respondents to categorize their major work activities themselves, provides similar resulting data despite some caveats and lessons for best enumeration practices. We compare these main activities to a series of yes/no questions about participation in a set of specific work tasks. We find a 12% incidence of “missing” work, whereby individuals who reported participation in at least one but did not have any recorded major activities. Looking by sector of work, women and youth are disproportionately more likely to have agricultural contributions “missed,” while we find no corresponding bias in undercounting of non-agricultural work. Finally, we test the effect of randomly positioning the task-based questions before the listing of major activities but do not find significant effects on the number or type of activities reported.
Can survey design reduce anchoring bias in recall data? Evidence from Malawi
Author: Godlonton, Susan
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 44
Book Description
Recall biases in retrospective survey data are widely considered to be pervasive and have important implications for effective agricultural research. In this paper, we leverage the survey design literature and test three strategies to attenuate mental anchoring in retrospective data collection: question order effects, retrieval cues, and aggregate (community) anchoring. We embed a survey design experiment in a longitudinal survey of smallholder farmers in Malawi and focus on anchoring bias in maize production and happiness exploiting differences between recalled and concurrent responses. We find that asking for retrospective data before concurrent data reduces recall bias by approximately 34% for maize production, a meaningful improvement with no increase in survey data collection costs. Retrieval cues are less successful in reducing the bias for maize reports and involve more data collection time, while community anchors can exacerbate the bias. Reversing the order of questions and retrieval cues do not help to ease the bias for happiness reports.
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 44
Book Description
Recall biases in retrospective survey data are widely considered to be pervasive and have important implications for effective agricultural research. In this paper, we leverage the survey design literature and test three strategies to attenuate mental anchoring in retrospective data collection: question order effects, retrieval cues, and aggregate (community) anchoring. We embed a survey design experiment in a longitudinal survey of smallholder farmers in Malawi and focus on anchoring bias in maize production and happiness exploiting differences between recalled and concurrent responses. We find that asking for retrospective data before concurrent data reduces recall bias by approximately 34% for maize production, a meaningful improvement with no increase in survey data collection costs. Retrieval cues are less successful in reducing the bias for maize reports and involve more data collection time, while community anchors can exacerbate the bias. Reversing the order of questions and retrieval cues do not help to ease the bias for happiness reports.
Inclusive and efficient value chains: Highlights, lessons learned, and priorities for one CGIAR
Author: CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM)
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 12
Book Description
At the start of CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) Phase 2 in 2017, and later during the priority-setting round in 2019, each of the PIM research areas (‘flagships’) formulated key research questions they aimed to answer and identified theories of change and pathways to achieve impact. In this series, we share highlights of what we have learned and achieved and suggest areas to be explored in the future.
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 12
Book Description
At the start of CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) Phase 2 in 2017, and later during the priority-setting round in 2019, each of the PIM research areas (‘flagships’) formulated key research questions they aimed to answer and identified theories of change and pathways to achieve impact. In this series, we share highlights of what we have learned and achieved and suggest areas to be explored in the future.
The Rural New-Yorker
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agriculture
Languages : en
Pages : 744
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agriculture
Languages : en
Pages : 744
Book Description