Publication: A Comparison of CAPI and PAPI through a Randomized Field Experiment
Loading...
Date
2010-11
ISSN
Published
2010-11
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This paper reports on a randomized survey experiment among one thousand eight hundred and forty households, designed to compare pen-and-paper interviewing (PAPI) to computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI). The authors find that PAPI data contain a large number of errors, which can be avoided in CAPI. The authors show that error counts are not randomly distributed across the sample, but are correlated with household characteristics, potentially introducing sample bias in analysis if dubious observations need to be dropped. The authors demonstrate a tendency for the mean and spread of total measured consumption to be higher on paper compared to CAPI, translating into significantly lower measured poverty, higher measured inequality and higher income elasticity estimates. Investigating further the nature of PAPI’s measurement error for consumption, the authors fail to reject the hypothesis that it is classical: it attenuates the coefficient on consumption when used as explanatory variable and the authors find no evidence of bias when consumption is used as dependent variable. Finally, CAPI and PAPI are compared in terms of interview length, costs and respondents’ perceptions.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Caeyers, Bet; Chalmers, Neil; De Weerdt, Joachim. 2010. A Comparison of CAPI and PAPI through a Randomized Field Experiment. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/33699 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Methods of Household Consumption Measurement Through Surveys : Experimental Results from Tanzania(2010-12-01)Consumption expenditure has long been the preferred measure of household living standards. However, accurate measurement is a challenge and household expenditure surveys vary widely across many dimensions, including the level of reporting, the length of the reference period, and the degree of commodity detail. These variations occur both across countries and also over time within countries. There is little current understanding of the implications of such changes for spatially and temporally consistent measurement of household consumption and poverty. A field experiment in Tanzania tests eight alternative methods to measure household consumption on a sample of 4,000 households. There are significant differences between consumption reported by the benchmark personal diary and other diary and recall formats. Under-reporting is particularly relevant in illiterate households and for urban respondents completing household diaries; recall modules measure lower consumption than a personal diary, with larger gaps among poorer households and households with more adult members. Variations in reporting accuracy by household characteristics are also discussed and differences in measured poverty as a result of survey design are explored. The study concludes with recommendations for methods of survey based consumption measurement in low-income countries.Publication Decomposing Response Errors in Food Consumption Measurement(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-04)There is wide variation in how consumption is measured in household surveys both across countries and over time. This variation may confound welfare comparisons in part because these alternative survey designs produce consumption estimates that are differentially influenced by contrasting types of survey response error. Although previous studies have documented the extent of net error in alternative survey designs, little is known about the relative influence of the different response errors that underpin a survey estimate. This study leverages a recent randomized food consumption survey experiment in Tanzania to shed light on the relative influence of these various error types. The observed deviation of measured household consumption from a benchmark is decomposed into item-specific consumption incidence and consumption value so as to investigate effects related to (a) the omission of any consumption and then (b) the error in value reporting conditional on positive consumption. The results show that various survey designs exhibit widely differing error decompositions, and hence a simple summary comparison of the total recorded consumption across surveys will obscure specific error patterns and inhibit the lessons for improved consumption survey design. In light of these findings, the relative performance of common survey designs is discussed, and design lessons are drawn to enhance the accuracy of item-specific consumption reporting and, consequently, the measures of total household food consumption.Publication Employment and Own-Use Production in Household Surveys(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-08)Labor statistics provide essential information for macroeconomic planning and policy formulation on employment creation, vocational training, income generation, and poverty reduction. A clear understanding and accurate comparability of labor indicators are therefore crucial for promoting efficient policies across countries and require the consistent application of international standards in collecting employment data in multi-topic household surveys. This Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) guidebook provides informed advice to statisticians and survey practitioners on the accurate measurement of employment and work in accordance with standards of the 19th International conference of labor statisticians (ICLS) and in the context of multi-topic household surveys.Publication Using Paradata to Assess Respondent Burden and Interviewer Effects in Household Surveys(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-06-15)Over the past decade, national statistical offices in low- and middle-income countries have increasingly transitioned to computer-assisted personal interviewing and computer-assisted telephone interviewing for the implementation of household surveys. The byproducts of these types of data collection are survey paradata, which can unlock objective, module- and question-specific, actionable insights on respondent burden, survey costs, and interviewer effects. This study does precisely that, using paradata generated by the Survey Solutions computer-assisted personal interviewing platform in recent national household surveys implemented by the national statistical offices in Cambodia, Ethiopia, and Tanzania. Across countries, the average household interview, based on a socioeconomic household questionnaire, ranges from 82 to 120 minutes, while the average interview with an adult household member, based on a multi-topic individual questionnaire, takes between 13 to 25 minutes. Using a multilevel model that is estimated for each household and individual questionnaire module, the paper shows that interviewer effects on module duration are significantly larger than the estimates from high-income contexts. Food consumption, household roster, and non-farm enterprises consistently emerge among the top five household questionnaire modules in terms of total variance in duration, with 5 to 50 percent of the variability being attributable to interviewers. Similarly, labor, health, and land ownership appear among the top five individual questionnaire modules in terms of total variance in duration, with 6 to 50 percent of the variability being attributable to interviewers. These findings, particularly by module, point to where additional interviewer training, fieldwork supervision, and data quality monitoring may be needed in future surveys.Publication Capturing What Matters(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-12)The World Bank is an international leader in the methodology and implementation of household surveys, working in close partnership with national statistics offices (NSOs) around the world. This guidebook is a consolidation of field-tested best practices to implement, improve, and modernize nationally representative multi-topic household surveys for monitoring welfare and poverty. Offered as a reference guide for task team leaders (TTLs) within the World Bank, the guidebook is intended as a powerful tool for any survey practitioners (such as NSOs, development partners, educators, researchers, and students) implementing household surveys in low- and middle-income countries. This guidebook starts with survey design, the first step in any survey undertaking, with careful attention given to minimizing non-sampling errors. Subsequent sections are sampling; questionnaire modules, which form the core of this guidebook; followed by geographic information systems (GIS); computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI); and finally, documentation and dissemination of the resulting data.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Ten Steps to a Results-Based Monitoring and Evaluation System : A Handbook for Development Practitioners(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004)An effective state is essential to achieving socio-economic and sustainable development. With the advent of globalization, there are growing pressures on governments and organizations around the world to be more responsive to the demands of internal and external stakeholders for good governance, accountability and transparency, greater development effectiveness, and delivery of tangible results. Governments, parliaments, citizens, the private sector, Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs), civil society, international organizations, and donors are among the stakeholders interested in better performance. As demands for greater accountability and real results have increased, there is an attendant need for enhanced results-based monitoring and evaluation of policies, programs, and projects. This handbook provides a comprehensive ten-step model that will help guide development practitioners through the process of designing and building a results-based monitoring and evaluation system. These steps begin with a 'readiness assessment' and take the practitioner through the design, management, and importantly, the sustainability of such systems. The handbook describes each step in detail, the tasks needed to complete each one, and the tools available to help along the way.Publication Africa's Future, Africa's Challenge : Early Childhood Care and Development in Sub-Saharan Africa(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2008)This book seeks to achieve a balance, describing challenges that are being faced as well as developments that are underway. It seeks a balance in terms of the voices heard, including not just voices of the North commenting on the South, but voices from the South, and in concert with the North. It seeks to provide the voices of specialists and generalists, of those from international and local organizations, from academia and the field. It seeks a diversity of views and values. Such diversity and complexity are the reality of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) today. The major focus of this book is on SSA from the Sahel south. Approximately 130 million children between birth and age 6 live in SSA. Every year 27 million children are born, and every year 4.7 million children under age 5 die. Rates of birth and of child deaths are consistently higher in SSA than in any other part of the world; the under-5 mortality rate of 163 per 1,000 is twice that of the rest of the developing world and 30 times that of industrialized countries (UNICEF 2006). Of the children who are born, 65 percent will experience poverty, 14 million will be orphans affected by HIV/AIDS directly and within their families and one-third will experience exclusion because of their gender or ethnicity.Publication World Development Report 2017(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2017-01-30)Why are carefully designed, sensible policies too often not adopted or implemented? When they are, why do they often fail to generate development outcomes such as security, growth, and equity? And why do some bad policies endure? This book addresses these fundamental questions, which are at the heart of development. Policy making and policy implementation do not occur in a vacuum. Rather, they take place in complex political and social settings, in which individuals and groups with unequal power interact within changing rules as they pursue conflicting interests. The process of these interactions is what this Report calls governance, and the space in which these interactions take place, the policy arena. The capacity of actors to commit and their willingness to cooperate and coordinate to achieve socially desirable goals are what matter for effectiveness. However, who bargains, who is excluded, and what barriers block entry to the policy arena determine the selection and implementation of policies and, consequently, their impact on development outcomes. Exclusion, capture, and clientelism are manifestations of power asymmetries that lead to failures to achieve security, growth, and equity. The distribution of power in society is partly determined by history. Yet, there is room for positive change. This Report reveals that governance can mitigate, even overcome, power asymmetries to bring about more effective policy interventions that achieve sustainable improvements in security, growth, and equity. This happens by shifting the incentives of those with power, reshaping their preferences in favor of good outcomes, and taking into account the interests of previously excluded participants. These changes can come about through bargains among elites and greater citizen engagement, as well as by international actors supporting rules that strengthen coalitions for reform.Publication Tanzania(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-06)This study aims to achieve a better understanding of the agricultural risk and risk management situation in Tanzania with a view to identifying key solutions to reduce current gross domestic product (GDP) growth volatility. For the purpose of this assessment, risk is defined as the probability that an uncertain event will occur that can potentially produce losses to participants along the supply chain. Persistence of unmanaged risks in agriculture is a cause of great economic losses for farmers and other actors along the supply chains (for example, traders, processors, and exporters), affecting export earnings and food security. The agricultural sector risk assessment is a straightforward methodology based on a three-phase sequential process. Phase analyzes the chronological occurrence of inter-seasonal agricultural risks with a view to identify and prioritize the risks that are the drivers of agricultural GDP volatility. This report contains the findings and recommendations of the first phase and includes the identification, analysis, and prioritization of major risks facing the agricultural sector in Tanzania, as well as recommendations regarding key solutions. Chapter one gives introduction and context. Chapter two contains an overview of the agricultural sector and its performance, as well as a discussion of key agro-climatic, weather, and policy restrictions and opportunities. Chapter three includes an assessment of major risks (that is, production, market, and enabling environment risks) facing key export and food crops. Chapter four presents an estimate of historical losses due to realized production risks and a correlation of such losses with production volatility. Chapter five provides insights into the exposure to risks by different stakeholders and their actual capacities, vulnerabilities, and potential to manage agricultural risks. Chapter six presents a risk prioritization by different supply chains and discusses the possible solutions, as well as specific recommendations for the agricultural sector development program (ASDP).Publication World Development Report 1984(New York: Oxford University Press, 1984)Long-term needs and sustained effort are underlying themes in this year's report. As with most of its predecessors, it is divided into two parts. The first looks at economic performance, past and prospective. The second part is this year devoted to population - the causes and consequences of rapid population growth, its link to development, why it has slowed down in some developing countries. The two parts mirror each other: economic policy and performance in the next decade will matter for population growth in the developing countries for several decades beyond. Population policy and change in the rest of this century will set the terms for the whole of development strategy in the next. In both cases, policy changes will not yield immediate benefits, but delay will reduce the room for maneuver that policy makers will have in years to come.