Development of a Cost-Effective Poverty Assessment Tool

This report details the process and the results from a survey undertaken by Instituto Cuanto in coordination with the IRIS Center for developing a cost-effective poverty appraisal tool.

The report describes the survey process that involved execution of a number of tasks, subtasks and operations, structured as follows:

• Selection and training of survey personnel included :
  • Personnel recruiting and technical training for fieldwork supervisors and interviewers;
  • A course for critics and codification operators.
• Fieldwork: Data gathered from selected households to meet survey objectives.
  • Fieldwork planning and programming;
  • Fieldwork execution;
  • Fieldwork control and supervision.
• Data entry and validation involved:
  • Gathering, coding, and entering the data from completed questionnaires.
• Sampling:
  • Sample of MFI Clients;
  • Sample of Non-Clients.
• Supervision: A number of supervising visits to most fieldwork teams carried out to observe their performance.

Finally, the report lists the major findings of the survey:

• Interviewers were able to administer the Composite Questionnaire within 90 minutes;
• Effort was required to improve the wording of some questions;
• Errors were found in the list of entering clients;
• Respondents continually expressed their discomfort towards some questions depicting their living conditions.