The Effect of Monitoring: How Data Collection Type and Frequency Boosts Participation and the Adoption of Best Practices in a Coffee Agronomy Training Program in Rwanda.

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.