IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/evarev/v39y2015i6p555-586.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Effect of Monitoring

Author

Listed:
  • Sachin Gathani
  • Maria Paula Gomez
  • Ricardo Sabates
  • Dimitri Stoelinga

Abstract

Background: The impact of surveying on individuals’ behavior and decision making has been widely studied in academic literature on market research but not so much the impact of monitoring on economic development interventions. Objectives: To estimate whether different monitoring strategies lead to improvement in participation levels and adoption of best practices for coffee production for farmer who participated in TechnoServe Agronomy Training Program in Rwanda. Research Design: Farmers were identified randomly for monitoring purposes to belong to two different groups and then selected depending on the additional criterion of having productive coffee trees. We estimate treatment-on-the-treated and intention-to-treat effects on training attendance rates and farmers best-practice adoptions using difference-in-differences estimation techniques. Subjects: Farmers were randomly identified to a high or low monitoring with different type and frequency of data collection and selected if they had productive coffee trees as part of the monitoring strategy. Measures: Attendance to training sessions by all farmers in the program and best-practice adoption data for improving coffee yield. Results: We find that monitoring led to surprisingly large increases in farmer participation levels in the project and also improved best-practice adoption rates. We also find that higher frequency of data collection has long-lasting effects and are more pronounced for low-attendance farmers. Conclusions: Monitoring not only provides more data and a better understanding of project dynamics, which in turn can help improve design, but can also improve processes and outcomes, in particular for the least engaged.

Suggested Citation

  • Sachin Gathani & Maria Paula Gomez & Ricardo Sabates & Dimitri Stoelinga, 2015. "The Effect of Monitoring," Evaluation Review, , vol. 39(6), pages 555-586, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:evarev:v:39:y:2015:i:6:p:555-586
    DOI: 10.1177/0193841X16633584
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0193841X16633584
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0193841X16633584?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Card, David & Krueger, Alan B, 1994. "Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(4), pages 772-793, September.
    2. Dean Karlan & Sendhil Mullainathan & Margaret McConnell & Jonathan Zinman, 2010. "Getting to theTop of Mind: How Reminders Increase Saving," Working Papers id:2587, eSocialSciences.
    3. Kremer, Michael R. & Karlan, D. S. & Hornbeck, Richard A. & Gine, X. & Duflo, E. & Pariente, W. & Null, C. & Miguel, E. & Devoto, F. & Crepon, B. & Banerjee, A. & Zwane, A. P. & Zinman, J. & Van Dusen, 2011. "Being Surveyed Can Change Later Behavior and Related Parameter Estimates," Scholarly Articles 11339433, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    4. White, Halbert, 1980. "A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 817-838, May.
    5. Morwitz, Vicki G & Johnson, Eric J & Schmittlein, David C, 1993. "Does Measuring Intent Change Behavior?," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 20(1), pages 46-61, June.
    6. Jeffrey M Wooldridge, 2010. "Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 2, volume 1, number 0262232588, December.
    7. Dholakia, Utpal M & Morwitz, Vicki G, 2002. "The Scope and Persistence of Mere-Measurement Effects: Evidence from a Field Study of Customer Satisfaction Measurement," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 29(2), pages 159-167, September.
    8. Imbens, Guido W & Angrist, Joshua D, 1994. "Identification and Estimation of Local Average Treatment Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(2), pages 467-475, March.
    9. Paul J. Gertler & Sebastian Martinez & Patrick Premand & Laura B. Rawlings & Christel M. J. Vermeersch, . "Impact Evaluation in Practice, First Edition [La evaluación de impacto en la práctica]," World Bank Publications, The World Bank, number 2550, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rajeev Dehejia, 2013. "The Porous Dialectic: Experimental and Non-Experimental Methods in Development Economics," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2013-011, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Dehejia Rajeev, 2015. "Experimental and Non-Experimental Methods in Development Economics: A Porous Dialectic," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 6(1), pages 47-69, June.
    3. Niels-Hugo Blunch & Nabanita Datta Gupta, 2020. "Mothers’ health knowledge for children with diarrhea: who you are or who you know?," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 18(4), pages 1131-1164, December.
    4. Dehejia, Rajeev, 2013. "The Porous Dialectic: Experimental and Non-Experimental Methods in Development Economics," WIDER Working Paper Series 011, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    5. John Robert Warren & Andrew Halpern-Manners, 2012. "Panel Conditioning in Longitudinal Social Science Surveys," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 41(4), pages 491-534, November.
    6. Blunch, Niels-Hugo, 2013. "Staying Alive: Adult Literacy Programs and Child Mortality in Rural Ghana," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 114-126.
    7. Guido W. Imbens, 2010. "Better LATE Than Nothing: Some Comments on Deaton (2009) and Heckman and Urzua (2009)," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(2), pages 399-423, June.
    8. Konstantinos Metaxoglou, 2021. "Canadian Journal of Economics: A historic overview," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(3), pages 1418-1453, November.
    9. Harold Alderman & John Hoddinott & Bill Kinsey, 2006. "Long term consequences of early childhood malnutrition," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 58(3), pages 450-474, July.
    10. David Card, 2022. "Design-Based Research in Empirical Microeconomics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(6), pages 1773-1781, June.
    11. Peter Harasztosi & Attila Lindner, 2019. "Who Pays for the Minimum Wage?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(8), pages 2693-2727, August.
    12. Frölich, Markus & Lechner, Michael, 2010. "Exploiting Regional Treatment Intensity for the Evaluation of Labor Market Policies," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 105(491), pages 1014-1029.
    13. Tesfaye, Wondimagegn & Tirivayi, Nyasha, 2020. "Crop diversity, household welfare and consumption smoothing under risk: Evidence from rural Uganda," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    14. Sakaue, Katsuki, 2018. "Informal fee charge and school choice under a free primary education policy: Panel data evidence from rural Uganda," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 112-127.
    15. Subal C. Kumbhakar & Christopher F. Parmeter & Valentin Zelenyuk, 2022. "Stochastic Frontier Analysis: Foundations and Advances I," Springer Books, in: Subhash C. Ray & Robert G. Chambers & Subal C. Kumbhakar (ed.), Handbook of Production Economics, chapter 8, pages 331-370, Springer.
    16. Federico Belotti & Edoardo Di Porto & Gianluca Santoni, 2021. "The effect of local taxes on firm performance: Evidence from geo‐referenced data," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(2), pages 492-510, March.
    17. Dennis Shen & Peng Ding & Jasjeet Sekhon & Bin Yu, 2022. "Same Root Different Leaves: Time Series and Cross-Sectional Methods in Panel Data," Papers 2207.14481, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2022.
    18. Giovanni Cerulli, 2014. "ntreatreg: a Stata module for estimation of treatment effects in the presence of neighborhood interactions," United Kingdom Stata Users' Group Meetings 2014 15, Stata Users Group.
    19. Ellis, Jimmy R. & Gershenson, Seth, 2016. "LATE for the Meeting: Gender, Peer Advising, and College Success," IZA Discussion Papers 9956, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Victor Stango & Jonathan Zinman, 2014. "Limited and Varying Consumer Attention: Evidence from Shocks to the Salience of Bank Overdraft Fees," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 27(4), pages 990-1030.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:evarev:v:39:y:2015:i:6:p:555-586. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.