DRG Impact Evaluation and Survey Reports

Recent DRG Impact Evaluation reports examine:

(1) USAID's Ghana Strengthening Accountability Mechanisms (GSAM) project: An impact evaluation of USAID's GSAM project, which aims to increase accountability of local District Assemblies in Ghana, tested the effect of two distinct efforts to increase accountability and improve service delivery outcomes at the district level. One-hundred and fifty of Ghana's districts were randomized into three groups: a top-down treatment group that received performance audits conducted by the central government Ghana Audit Service; a bottom-up treatment group that received civil-society organization led scorecard campaigns; and a control group that did not receive either intervention. 

The study finds that both CSO and audit programming are effective at increasing citizen awareness of poor performing district projects and services, that citizens correctly attribute negative audit performance to poor-performing district authorities, but that citizens awareness did not translate into substantial changes in how administrators or politicians manage projects or project budgets. 

(2) USAID's Niger Participatory and Responsive Governance (PRG) Project: To better understand how the USAID's PRG project may affect governance in Niger, the DRG Center and USAID/Niger funded an impact evaluation focuses on PRG's multi-stakeholder dialogues that will bring together community leaders, municipal and regional councilors, private sector actors, professionals and citizens to confer upon, design, and initiate Regional Development Plans and Communal Development Plans. The expectation is the multi-stakeholder dialogues will catalyze development and government responsiveness both in terms of process and outcomes. The evaluation employs a randomized design to test this theory of change. The baseline report provides an overview of the design of the impact evaluation as well as findings from a baseline household and community leader survey.

(3) Tax Collection in Malawi - Baseline Report:  This report presents the findings of a baseline survey for a field experiment to be conducted in Malawi on tax compliance in markets. The proposed experiment will test the effectiveness of two different approaches to improving tax compliance: a bundle of bottom-up interventions that focus on increasing quasi-voluntary tax compliance, and a bundle of top-down interventions that focus on improving the government’s ability to collect taxes and enforce tax compliance. This experiment will be randomized at the market level, across 128 markets in eight districts in Malawi.

(4) CVE in Burkina Faso - Baseline Report: ‘Voices for Peace’ is a communication media intervention funded by USAID, and implemented by the NGO Equal Access to promote peace and tolerance, and counter violent extremism in the Sahel region of West Africa, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad. The approach of the Voices for Peace is to strengthen and sustain local narratives of tolerance and moderation by building on local cultural and historical traditions. Promoting positive alternative narratives can be effective in countering violent extremist propaganda. One innovative approach to promoting such narratives, also one of the key features of ‘Voices for Peace’, involves the use of educational radio dramas—a methodology referred to as education entertainment or shortly edutainment. Edutainment is defined as the “process of purposely designing and implementing a media message to both entertain and educate, in order to increase audience members’ knowledge about an educational issue, create favorable attitudes, shift social norms, and change overt behavior” (Singhal, Cody, Rogers, & Sabido, 2003, p. 5). Edutainment blends educational messages about social issues into an entertaining format, such as a radio drama.  Building on this rationale, an Impact Evaluation (IE) study was designed to examine whether radio dramas can be an effective tool to counter violent extremism. Specifically, we evaluate the impact of a new radio drama to counter violent extremism in the Sahel region in Burkina Faso.

(5) DRG Survey Final Report - Liberia Electoral Access and Participation Survey (LEAP): USAID/Liberia and the DRG Center partnered to conduct the Liberia Electoral Access and Participation, Iteration II (LEAP II) survey. The objective of the survey is to track the influence of civic and voter education efforts on voter engagement and collect data on Liberian’s perceptions of the national election administration's performance.  The survey began immediately after the Presidential and House of Representative run-off elections in January 2018. Key findings from the data include: 

- Most Liberians know where they need to go to vote and believe the NEC has done a good job informing the population about voting requirements;

- In general, the NEC is viewed as effective and trusted among Liberians – perceptions of the NEC’s performance educating the citizens, especially among women, have become more positive since the last elections;

- While both voter registration and participation in the elections is higher among all Liberians, Liberian women made greater gains than men and now report registering and voting at levels nearly identical to Liberian men;

- Perceptions of unfair election practices remain problematic – compared to 2015, respondents in 2018 are more than twice as likely to say vote buying is a practice “almost everyone” takes part in and about 10% more likely to say they are aware of the practice of trucking among voters;

- Liberians are more likely to identify with a specific political party than they were in 2015.

(6) DRG Survey Final Report - Honduras CTIP: CTIP survey examines the prevalence of different forms of human trafficking in Honduras, and how victim vulnerabilities, recruitment patterns, regional particularities, and servitude experiences vary given different types of human trafficking.  Findings include:

-       - Approximately 30% of vulnerable populations who receive services from NGOs in Honduras are victims of some form of human trafficking. Of those identified as human trafficking victims

-       - The demographics characteristics of the victims tend to vary by age, gender, sexuality, and education level for different types of human trafficking

-      -  The vast majority of trafficking taking place in Honduras is internal trafficking, with most occurring in one’s own hometown or village.