IMPACT-L Archives

Moderated conference on impact assessment of agricultural research: May 2014

Impact-L@LISTSERV.FAO.ORG

Options: Use Forum View

Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Condense Mail Headers

Message: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Author: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Content-Type:
text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Date:
Fri, 16 May 2014 11:37:49 +0200
Reply-To:
Subject:
Content-Transfer-Encoding:
quoted-printable
Message-ID:
MIME-Version:
1.0
Sender:
Moderated conference on impact assessment of agricultural research <[log in to unmask]>
From:
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (27 lines)
My name is Dr. Deogratias Lwezaura, Principal Economist, Ministry of Agriculture, Tanzania. I also serve as M&E specialist of the Eastern Africa Agricultural Productivity Project, Tanzania.
 
I have been following the good discussion with interest and I have some comments to make.

When I read through the discussions, I see there are still critical methodological issues whose consensus is still not conclusive. For example, evaluating adoption: how do we sample the categories of respondents such as project participants, non-participants, participating district/region or non-participating district/region/province so that we came up with statistical conclusion of adoption rates or proportion of adopters and thus their impact? And, in sampling, how many should be project participants and non-project participants? - several studies I have done I use 50:50. But several points have been made that evaluation should properly be planned or designed right away from project design, identifying the project participants and non-project participants (though there arise ethical issues as to why discriminating other eligible participants) and issues on how do you control for technologies moving from project participants to non-participants as they are in the same villages/district? These issues are critical for conclusive attribution.

On another point: when I was reading Dick Tinsleys' comments it came in my mind that, how many hectares or acres of farm under improved technology a farmer has planted should be appropriately considered as adoption? I am posing this because in Africa some farmers own less than 0.25 acres, or ranging from 0.25 acres to 3 hectares. Can we count and treat a farmer with 0.25 acres of improved seed and another with 3 hectares the same and conclude that two farmers have adopted the technology? What benchmark should we use in terms of farm size? In my evaluation I have been doing I have been treating them the same and coming up with proportion of adoption. Think of one snapshot cross section data collection: how do we know that the farmer will use the technology consistently for the rest of the years, or we should consider adoption as in one year? These are some of the challenges we need to have in mind and to work out methodologies for how we deal with them.

But also as we discuss the ex-post Impact assessment (epIA): I see confusion in terminology between assessment and evaluation. Several times these words are used interchangeably, but in fact they seem to be quite different. Assessment can be done at any stage of the project implementation, but evaluation is for impact looking at what went well or wrong and what benefits accrued by the beneficiaries or stakeholders and usually done at the end of the project. Evaluation can use rigorous and systematic scientific methods, bringing in the dimension of counterfactuals (project participants and non-participants; and before and after observations)  as a way of overcoming attribution bias. So in my own viewpoint, they are different terminologies.

I am in agreement with several submissions that impact evaluation should be carried some years after the project/program end. But again, how many years? Although to my thinking this would depend on the nature of the technology. In this regard and in my own personal perspective, I was thinking that it depends on a kind of intervention for any impact to be realized. For example, an intervention regarding a supply of improved maize seed varieties: maize can mature within 3 months, giving a farmer higher yield and ultimately selling and accruing higher income. Can't this be registered as impact to those farmers? So it would depend on the nature of technology. 

Dr. Deogratias Lwezaura (PhD)
BSc, Agric economics, MSc, agric. economics, PhD, economics
Ministry of Agriculture
Dar es Salaam,
Tanzania
Mobile: +255 273 997
e-mail: Lwezaura (at) hotmail.com
 
[To contribute to this conference, send your message to [log in to unmask] For further information, see http://www.fao.org/nr/research-extension-systems/res-home/news/detail/en/c/217706/ ].

########################################################################

To unsubscribe from the Impact-L list, click the following link:
https://listserv.fao.org/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=Impact-L&A=1

ATOM RSS1 RSS2