IA Step 5

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e. IA Step 5

Carry out the Field Research and Analyze Its Results.

Under the supervision of the sponsoring organization and its external advisers, the local research partner carries out the baseline field research, which includes the impact assessment survey and complementary qualitative data collection activities, principally key informant interviews and focus group discussions. The local research partner next organizes the data and summarizes the findings. For the impact survey, this involves entering the survey responses into a data set, cleaning the data, and tabulating the results into simple descriptives and frequencies. For the qualitative research, this involves organizing the raw responses, summarizing them, and noting general trends.

It is up to the sponsoring organization to determine who conducts the in-depth data analysis. It may be the local research partner or an external consultant hired by the sponsor. Before hiring the local research partner to perform the in-depth data analysis, the sponsor should confirm the partner's data analysis capacity, its familiarity with the project and its causal model (relevant for interpreting the results), and its language capacities (relevant for preparing the final report). In some cases, it may be appropriate for the local partner to perform all data analysis and report writing. In other cases, it may be appropriate to hire the local research partner to perform the data analysis and report writing and to hire an external consultant to review and (if necessary) revise the data analysis and final report. This option is particularly relevant where the local research partner does not possess native speaking capacity in the language of the final report. In yet other cases, it may be appropriate to hire an external consultant to perform the data analysis and prepare the final report.

The analysis of the baseline results is largely descriptive. Its aim is to create an accurate picture of the conditions within the project and among treatment and control group participants at or near project inception to serve as a baseline against which changes can be measured after the follow-up round of research is completed.

In contrast, the aim of the follow-up (or endline)data analysis is to document the changes in outcomes and impacts that have occurred since the baseline and to attribute the observed changes to project activities. Project impact is assessed using the “difference in difference” method, in which the changes among the treatment group of project beneficiaries are compared to changes among the control group of non-beneficiaries. Impact is inferred if the changes among the treatment group are significantly more favorable than changes among the control group. The analysis must also take account of “mediating variables” that might affect this comparison—for example, differences in wealth, age, gender, or educational attainment between the two samples.

For more information on data collection and analysis, see the Impact Assessment Primer Series article #3, "Collecting and Using Data for Impact Assessment."

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