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Research design and opportunities for evaluation

USAID Feed the Future Africa RISING (Research in Sustainable Intensification for the Next Generation)Monitoring & Evaluation Expert Meeting, September 5-7, 2012, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

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Research questions

• What are options for SI poverty, nutrition, ecosystem stability?

• What are processes/mechanisms for integrating & delivering SI innovations?

• How improve livelihoods out of poverty/improve nutrition?

• How upscale/disseminate integrated innovations for SI beyond AR area?

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Motivation

• Need rigorous research design (hypotheses, parameters, puzzle, analytical methods, data collection) + appropriate counterfactuals/controls for confounding factors

• Need to move away from on-farm plot-level randomized trials to design that allows farmers to select into adoption

• Can use quasi-experimental and experimental (RCTs)

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Motivation

• Need global best practice: RCTs “gold standard”

• Need IPGs: internationally generalizable lessons: scalability

• Need to leverage public-private-civil society partnerships funded by USAID already on the ground

• Need to link supply and demand side experimentation

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Trials design: Random placement Trials design: Random placement

National Level

Regional Level

Agglomeration

Platforms: SI innovations

District

No intervention

“Counterfactual”

Obs. unit Village Village Village Village Village

TF1 TF2 No intervention

Limited/observation

Degree of intervention/ method

Limited/observation (RQ3)

Some/exploration (RQ2 and 3)

High/e.g., Fisher or classical experimentation: Mother-Baby; RCTS (RQ1)

Response variable dependent on the trials hypothesis

No intervention

Response variable dependent on the trials hypothesis

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Trials design: Random phase-in Trials design: Random phase-in

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ConsumersConsumers

Channel 2Fresh grains unprocesse

d

Channel 3Dried grains unprocessed

Channel 4Dried grains

export

ExportsExports

Channel 5Dried grains

processed

ConsumersConsumers

SubsistenceSubsistencehouseholdshouseholds

Consumption

Distribution

Trade

On-farm production

Inputs

Channel 1Subsistence production

& consumption

Processing

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• Use encouragement as an instrumental variable for adoption

• Random extension of credit to some farmers, randomized price subsidies through coupon distribution

• Randomized Mother-Baby trials

Trials design: Demand-side: Trials design: Demand-side: Encouragement Encouragement

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Trials design: Demand-side: Trials design: Demand-side: Encouragement: M-B Encouragement: M-B

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Trials design: Demand-side: Trials design: Demand-side: Encouragement : M-B Encouragement : M-B

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Trials design: Demand-side: Trials design: Demand-side: Encouragement : M-B Encouragement : M-B

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• Sell innovations at the market price

• Choose villages without innovations and randomly choose subset of villages to sell innovations

• Randomized offer of production and marketing contracts to entire treatment villages

Trials design: Supply-side: Introduce Trials design: Supply-side: Introduce to entire villages mimicking markets to entire villages mimicking markets

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Forward Contracts No Forward Contracts

Seed + Fertilizer Fertilizer Only Seed + Fertilizer Fertilizer Only

Seed Only Neither Seed Only Neither

Trials design: Supply-side: Introduce Trials design: Supply-side: Introduce to entire villages mimicking markets to entire villages mimicking markets

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• Offer some randomly selected groups of households in different settings at multiple sites the same technologies and delivery mechanisms

• GIS-based meta-analysis of the effects of the interventions

• GIS-based prediction of effects of subsequent implementation of the program

Scalability