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Moderated conference on impact assessment of agricultural research: May 2014

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Wed, 28 May 2014 15:07:37 +0200
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This is Matthieu, Sylvain and Dominique, again (Message 72).

We would like to thank Ed Garrett (Message 77) and Hippolyte Affognon (Message 78) for their responses to our previous message (72) !

We must say however that we are still not totally convinced about the potential of social network analysis (SNA) for ex-post impact evaluation. In one word, how can a method based on observing links between people say anything about changes and evolution of individual people?

We really liked Ed Garrett's proposal to do a social network analysis of social networks such as web forums, etc. This indeed circumvents SNA's issue of being static, as well as costly, and furthermore offers a simple way to conduct surveys or polls. But such a case, where a forum is initiated at the beginning of the process and accessed by everyone, is closer to an ideal case which unfortunately does not apply for the cases we intend to cover.

We agree also with Hippolyte that networks play an important role for knowledge diffusion which is a key element for adoption. So here SNA might be helpful to understand a few links in the pathway from R&D to adoption. But for the impact evaluation step looking at the effect of adopting the technology (or being linked to a network transmitting
information) on the actors, on their behaviour, etc, we are still unclear how SNA will provide useful information. 

Finally, Hippolyte, we are not sure we understand the point that SNA can also be used to capture the "spillover effects of technology adoption on impact". Are you referring here to peer-effects leading some to adopt based on the adoption of peers, or are you referring to the fact that the impact on some might depend on whether peers adopt ? And, in both cases, how would you see the contribution of SNA to answering the question of whether adoption leads to impact?

Thanks a lot!

Matthieu Stigler, Dominique Barjolle and Sylvain Quiédeville 
Institut de recherche de l¹agriculture biologique (FiBL) 
Ackerstrasse 113, 
Case postale 219
5070 Frick,
Switzerland
www.fibl.org
e-mail: matthieu.stigler (at) gmail.com

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