Towards Standardization of Farm Household Surveys:

Protocols and Tools for Data Collection, Analyses and Visualization

Principle Investigator

Fergus Sinclair, World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)

Collaborators

Mark van Wijk, ILRI

James Hammond, World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)

Geographic area of interest

All SIIL countries

Description

Current measurement datasets of poverty and food security of smallholder farmers in developing countries and the potential impact of agronomic interventions on key farm household performance indicators are scattered, have often severe problems in terms of data quality and are limited in their (re-)usability because of the absence of comparable sets of standardized indicators and monitoring systems. A recent analysis of farm household level survey data collected in different agricultural development oriented projects, showed large differences between different survey instruments, with lack of standardization of indicators and evidence that only a small amount of the information collected during lengthy surveys could actually be used for cross-site comparisons. Scientists and technician at NGOs are often re-inventing the wheel in terms of developing new surveys, and rarely make use of the newest developments in digital data collection (for example through ODK) and standardized analysis and visualization procedures that are possible through programs like R. In this project we will take recent work on developing and standardizing data collection protocols linked to rapid analysis and visualization procedures a step further, document them well and make them available for fellow scientists and technician of NGOs by supplying online material and develop course material introducing the concepts by and the practicalities of these approaches. This project will make use of existing data collected with the RHOMIS (Rural Household Multiple Indicator Survey) framework (described in Hammond et al., forthcoming; data available for Tanzania, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Guatemala and planned applications in sites in Nigeria, Ethiopia, India and Mali) and will apply the approach that will be further developed in this activity in a new project funded by the Sustainable Intensification Innovation Laboratory (SIIL) in Burkina Faso, West Africa.

Objectives

Develop standardized data collection protocols for a series of indicators quantifying food security, nutrition and economic performance at farm household level

Develop standard analysis procedures for the data collected in the abovementioned data collection protocols

Develop simple visualization tools showing the outputs of key indicators of food security, nutrition and economic performance for individual households and across the farm household population sampled in the survey protocols

Develop course material for technical NGO staff introducing the concepts behind and practicalities of digital survey data collection (for example in ODK), setting up data servers for rapid up and downloading survey information collected in the field and standardized analysis and visualization approaches

Key Achievements (last update: Nov 2016)

None

Publications/presentations/workshops

None

Status

Ongoing