As of June 7, 2015, Sierra Leone had reported more than 12,900 cases of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), and over 3,900 deaths since the outbreak began.
... See More + In recent months, substantial progress has been made, with a maximum of 15 new cases per week reported following a nationwide lockdown and information campaign at the end of March. The Government of Sierra Leone, with support from the World Bank Group, has been conducting mobile phone surveys with the aim of capturing the key socio-economic effects of the virus. Three rounds of data collection have been conducted, in November 2014, January-February 2015, and May 2015. The survey was given to household heads for whom cell phone numbers were recorded during the nationally-representative Labor Force Survey conducted in July and August 2014. Overall, 66 percent of the 4,199 households sampled in that survey had cell phones, although this coverage was uneven across the country, with higher levels in urban areas (82 percent) than rural areas (43 percent). Of those with cell phones, 51 percent were surveyed in all three rounds, and 79 percent were reached in at least one round. The results for the third round of the survey, which contacted 1,715 households, focus mainly on employment, agriculture, food security and prices, and health service utilization, covering predominantly urban areas where cell phone coverage is highest, but including rural areas as much as possible given the sample available.
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As of April 8, 2015, Sierra Leone had reported more than 12,000 cases of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), and over 3,800 deaths. Recent World Health Organization (WHO) reports show that Sierra Leone has seen a decrease in new cases each week in the month leading up to April 5, and that week’s infection rate was the lowest seen since May 2014.
... See More + This is cause for cautious optimism. The Government of Sierra Leone, with support from the World Bank Group and in partnership with Innovations for Poverty Action, is conducting mobile phone surveys with the aim of capturing the key socio-economic effects of the virus. The results focus mainly on employment, agriculture, food security and prices, and health service utilization, covering predominantly urban areas where cell phone coverage is highest, but including rural areas as much as possible given the sample available. Based on the second round of data collection in January-February 2015, it is clear that the impact of EVD on household wellbeing continues to be widespread, and that despite some improvements in the health situation, the economic situation remains uneven. The overall employment situation has improved since November, driven by increases in employment rates in urban areas. However, youth employment in Freetown has seen a continued decline and the percentage of households in non-farm enterprise work who reported that their business is no longer operating is now at four times the pre-crisis level.
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Since Liberia’s Ebola virus disease (EVD) epidemic began in March 2014, nearly 10,000 persons have contracted the virus and more than 4,000 have died.
... See More + The economic impact of Ebola survey is a high frequency cell phone survey designed to monitor the socio-economic impacts of the EVD crisis in Liberia. The survey has been conducted in five rounds from October 2014 to March 2015. The sample is based on the nationally representative household income and expenditure survey (HIES) implemented from February to August 2014 by the Liberia institute of statistics and geo-information services (LISGIS). The report presents an update of the epidemiological situation in Liberia and associated response efforts at the time of the fifth round of data collection (March 12-18, 2015). It gives an updates on the employment, prices, food security, coping strategies, health, and education indicators surveyed.
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There is an inherent tension between traditional norms and survey protocols for quantitative data collected in the developing world. Unexpected interactions between the interviewer and respondent can lead to interviewer effects in the data, particularly in the case of subjective or sensitive questions.
... See More + This paper makes use of a unique data set available from Timor-Leste containing subjective and objective questions to study these effects. In addition to their age and gender, data were collected from the interviewers regarding their opinions on the subjective questions prior to fieldwork. Fixed effects and mixed effects logit models are used to examine the main effects and interactions between interviewer and respondent characteristics. More objective measures serve as a pseudo control group. The paper finds interviewer effects in the both subjective and objective data, but the magnitude is considerably stronger for subjective questions. The paper also finds that female respondents are more susceptible to influence based on the interviewer's beliefs. Despite methodological shortcomings, the study highlights the need to consider more fully the impact of traditional cultural norms when conducting quantitative surveys in the developing world on topics that are outside the standard objective questions.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7208 MAR 09, 2015
As of February 18, 2015 Liberia has reported over 9,000 cases of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), and 3,900 deaths. Since the previous round of data collection, in December 2014, Liberia continues to show progress toward getting to zero cases, and in the 21 days leading up to January 28, there were only 20 confirmed cases nationally, down from 92 in the 21 days ending on December 31, 2014, and a high of 546 in late August and early September.
... See More + It is believed that all those currently infected are seeking care in Ebola Treatment Units (ETUs), some of which have begun to close in recent weeks as a result of declining need. The World Bank Group, with the Liberia Institute of Statistics and Geo-Information Services and the Gallup Organization, has continued to monitor the socio-economic impacts of EVD on households through a series of mobile-phone surveys conducted in October, November, and December 2014, and January 2015. As the health crisis continues to abate in Liberia, it will be crucial to tackle the important medium- and long-term economic and welfare impacts of Ebola on households. As Liberia continues on the path to eradicating Ebola, it will be important to identify and support those who are most vulnerable to the sluggish economy and whose long-term welfare may be negatively impacted by coping decisions made in the name of immediate stability. As households send their children back to school in the next month, the World Bank Group and partners will continue to monitor the crisis and work to support the Liberian government and its people as they move into economic recovery.
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The most severe impact of the Ebola epidemic, which began in Guinea in December 2013 and quickly spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone, has been in lost human lives and suffering.
... See More + This report, prepared for the World Economic Forum at Davos, focuses on the indirect, economic costs, in particular the effects on economic output in 2015. Most of the economic cost is driven by aversion behavior, which consists of both the actions taken by individuals to avoid exposure to the illness and actions taken by investors in anticipation of those individual choices. The report first estimates the impact of the epidemic on gross domestic product (GDP) in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Here the report builds on sector-specific analysis to update World Bank forecasts for the three countries, and incorporates recent results of World Bank-financed cellphone surveys in Liberia and Sierra Leone. The authors evaluate the economic effects of the epidemic on the continent, beyond the three hardest-hit countries, using assessments by World Bank country economists across the 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa. Finally, the report updates estimates from the global economic model of the research arm of the World Bank, to quantify the 2015 impact of the potential spread of the epidemic to other countries. Updated general equilibrium analysis suggests that further spread of the epidemic to other African economies, if the epidemic is not contained and instances of infection continue to occur in other countries, can potentially exact an economic toll of the order of 6 billion dollars. The results underscore the importance of: (a) Ebola and broader pandemic preparedness in African countries; and (b) reaching the goal of zero new cases as soon as possible in the three most affected countries.
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Working Paper 93721 JAN 20, 2015
Thomas, Mark Roland; Smith, Gregory; Ferreira, Francisco H. G.; Evans, David; Maliszewska, Maryla; Cruz, Marcio; Himelein, Kristen; Over, MeadDisclosed
The economic impact of Ebola survey is a high frequency cell phone survey designed to monitor the socio-economic impacts of the ongoing Ebola crisis in Liberia.
... See More + The survey has been conducted in three rounds from October to December 2014. The sample is based on the nationally representative household income and expenditure survey (HIES) implemented from February to August 2014 by the Liberia institute of statistics and geo-information services (LISGIS). This effort was designed to provide rapid indicators of well-being from households across the country at a time when conducting a traditional face-to-face survey is extremely challenging. The survey was conducted by phone, and attempted to contact all households that participated in the HIES and for which cell phone numbers were recorded. As in the previous two rounds, low response rates hinder the representativeness of the survey. The report begins with an update of the situation in Liberia with regards to the Ebola virus disease (EVD) crisis and response at the time of the third round of data collection (December 2 - 8, 2014). This was followed by updates on employment, prices, food security, and migration. About three-quarters of households indicated that they were worried at some point in the previous week that they will not have enough to eat. Around two-thirds of households responded that they were not able to purchase enough rice to meet their needs in the previous two weeks, and nearly 80 percent of those cited a lack of money as the main reason.
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As of January 4, 2015, Sierra Leone had reported nearly 10,000 cases of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), and nearly 3,000 deaths. While recent World Health Organization (WHO) reports show that the outbreak is stabilizing in Guinea and Liberia, Sierra Leone continues to see an increasing number of cases and deaths, and the virus has now taken hold across all districts and particularly in the capital, Freetown.
... See More + This first round of data collection can serve as a reference point to track changes as the Ebola outbreak continues to unfold in Sierra Leone. Subsequent reports are planned monthly going forward in order to help the government and other stakeholders address the most pressing socioeconomic issues as they arise and assist in planning for the eventual crisis recovery.
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In much of the developing world, the demand for high frequency quality household data for poverty monitoring and program design far outstrips the capacity of the statistics bureau to provide such data.
... See More + In these environments, all available data sources must be leveraged. Most surveys, however, do not collect the detailed consumption data necessary to construct aggregates and poverty lines to measure poverty directly. This paper benefits from a shared listing exercise for two large-scale national household surveys conducted in Liberia in 2007 to explore alternative methodologies to estimate poverty indirectly. The first is an asset-based model that is commonly used in Demographic and Health Surveys. The second is a survey-to-survey imputation that makes use of small area estimation techniques. In addition to a standard base model, separate models are estimated for urban and rural areas and an expanded model that includes climatic variables. Special attention is paid to the inclusion of cell phones, with implications for other assets whose cost and availability may be changing rapidly. The results demonstrate substantial limitations with asset-based indexes, but also leave questions as to the accuracy and stability of imputation models.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7024 SEP 01, 2014
While self-assessments of welfare have become popular for measuring poverty and estimating welfare effects, the methods can be deceptive given systematic heterogeneity in respondents' scales.
... See More + Little is known about this problem. This study uses specially-designed surveys in three countries, Tajikistan, Guatemala, and Tanzania, to study scale heterogeneity. Respondents were asked to score stylized vignettes, as well as their own household. Diverse scales are in evidence, casting considerable doubt on the meaning of widely-used summary measures such as subjective poverty rates. Nonetheless, under the identifying assumptions of the study, only small biases are induced in the coefficients on widely-used regressors for subjective poverty and welfare.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6726 DEC 01, 2013
Livestock are an important component of rural livelihoods in developing countries, but data about this source of income and wealth are difficult to collect because of the nomadic and semi-nomadic nature of many pastoralist populations.
... See More + Most household surveys exclude those without permanent dwellings, leading to undercoverage. This study explores the use of a random geographic cluster sample as an alternative to the household-based sample. In this design, points are randomly selected and all eligible respondents found inside circles drawn around the selected points are interviewed. This approach should eliminate undercoverage of mobile populations. The results of a random geographic cluster sample survey are presented with a total sample size of 784 households to measure livestock ownership in the Afar region of Ethiopia in 2012. The paper explores the data quality of the random geographic cluster sample relative to a recent household survey and discusses the implementation challenges.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6589 SEP 01, 2013
The Living Standards Measurement Study -- Integrated Surveys on Agriculture project collects agricultural and livelihood data in seven countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
... See More + In order to maintain representativeness as much as possible over multiple rounds of data collection, a sub-sample of households are selected to have members that have left the household tracked and interviewed in their new location with their new household members. Since the sub-sampling occurs at the level of the household but tracking occurs at the level of the individual, a number of issues arise with the correct calculation for the sub-sampling and attrition corrections. This paper is based on the panel weight calculations for the initial rounds of the Integrated Surveys on Agriculture surveys in Uganda and Tanzania, and describes the methodology used for calculating the weight components related to sub-sampling, tracking, and attrition, as well as the criteria used for trimming and post-stratification. It also addresses complications resulting from members previously classified as having attrited from the sample returning in later rounds.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6373 FEB 01, 2013
Despite the importance of agriculture to economic development, and a vast accompanying literature on the subject, little research has been done on the quality of the underlying data.
... See More + Due to survey logistics, agricultural data are usually collected by asking respondents to recall the details of events occurring during past agricultural seasons that took place a number of months prior to the interview. This gap can lead to recall bias in reported data on agricultural activities. The problem is further complicated when interviews are conducted over the course of several months, thus leading to recall of variable length. To test for such recall bias, the length of time between harvest and interview is examined for three African countries with respect to several common agricultural input and harvest measures. The analysis shows little evidence of recall bias impacting data quality. There is some indication that more salient events are less subject to recall decay. Overall, the results allay some concerns about the quality of some types of agricultural data collected through recall over lengthy periods.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS5671 JUN 01, 2011
This briefing note examines perspectives on trust, authority, and responsibility for decision making in Timor-Leste, using findings from the justice module included in an extension of the 2007 Timor-Leste Survey of Living Standards (TLSLS2) and a review of relevant social-science literature.
... See More + It is hoped that this report will be a valuable resource for civil servants, civil society, and donor agencies working in Timor-Leste. This note examines relationships among East Timorese, focusing on trust, views on authority, and decision-making power. It begins by discussing the relationships between individuals specifically, trust in one's neighbors and perspectives on safety. While trust is essentially about these interpersonal relationships, research has shown that high levels of trust are associated with improved economic outcomes and better maintenance of public goods. Thus, trust within a society is important for a much wider set of outcomes. In later sections, the authors move to a discussion of individuals' relationships with institutions through the lens of community participation and beliefs about responsibility for dispute resolution. Throughout, the authors attempt to explain unusual findings or trends, making reference to relevant social-science literature. However, the authors also note where satisfying explanations have not been found, and welcome additional feedback and discussion on these areas.
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This report examines land access, disputes, and dispute resolution in Timor-Leste, using findings from the justice module included in an extension of the 2007 Timor-Leste Survey of Living Standards (TLSLS2) and a review of relevant social-science literature.
... See More + The extension survey (TLSLSx) revisited a nationally representative subsample of the TLSLS2 between April and October 2008. The respondent for the justice module was randomly selected to be the household head or his/her spouse, and the TLSLSx revisited 1,716 respondents across Timor-Leste's thirteen districts. Survey topics included: (1) access to information and decision making; (2) opinions and knowledge of the law; (3) trust and local institutions; and (4) dispute resolution. Findings from this survey have been summarized in three short briefing papers focusing on land and conflict, youth perspectives, and community trust and decision making.
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This briefing note examines intergenerational aspects of community involvement, trust, and authority, and dispute participation/resolution in Timor-Leste, using findings from the justice module included in an extension of the 2007 Timor-Leste Survey of Living Standards (TLSLS2) and a review of relevant social-science literature.
... See More + It is hoped that this report will be a valuable resource for civil servants, civil society organizations, and donor agencies working with youth in Timor-Leste. The extension survey (TLSLSx) revisited a nationally representative subsample of the TLSLS2 between April and October 2008. The respondent for the justice module was randomly selected to be the household head or his/her spouse, and topics included: (1) access to information and decision making; (2) opinions and knowledge of the law; (3) trust and local institutions; and (4) dispute resolution. Findings from this survey have been summarized in three short briefing papers focusing on youth perspectives, land and conflict, and community trust and decision making.
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This briefing note examines perspectives on trust, authority, and responsibility for decision making in Timor-Leste, using findings from the justice module included in an extension of the 2007 Timor-Leste Survey of Living Standards (TLSLS2) and a review of relevant social-science literature.
... See More + It is hoped that this report will be a valuable resource for civil servants, civil society, and donor agencies working in Timor-Leste. This note examines relationships among East Timorese, focusing on trust, views on authority, and decision-making power. It begins by discussing the relationships between individuals specifically, trust in one's neighbors and perspectives on safety. While trust is essentially about these interpersonal relationships, research has shown that high levels of trust are associated with improved economic outcomes and better maintenance of public goods. Thus, trust within a society is important for a much wider set of outcomes. In later sections, the authors move to a discussion of individuals' relationships with institutions through the lens of community participation and beliefs about responsibility for dispute resolution. Throughout, the authors attempt to explain unusual findings or trends, making reference to relevant social-science literature. However, the authors also note where satisfying explanations have not been found, and welcome additional feedback and discussion on these areas.
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This briefing note examines intergenerational aspects of community involvement, trust, and authority, and dispute participation/resolution in Timor-Leste, using findings from the justice module included in an extension of the 2007 Timor-Leste Survey of Living Standards (TLSLS2) and a review of relevant social-science literature.
... See More + It is hoped that this report will be a valuable resource for civil servants, civil society organizations, and donor agencies working with youth in Timor-Leste. The extension survey (TLSLSx) revisited a nationally representative subsample of the TLSLS2 between April and October 2008. The respondent for the justice module was randomly selected to be the household head or his/her spouse, and topics included: (1) access to information and decision making; (2) opinions and knowledge of the law; (3) trust and local institutions; and (4) dispute resolution. Findings from this survey have been summarized in three short briefing papers focusing on youth perspectives, land and conflict, and community trust and decision making.
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This report examines land access, disputes, and dispute resolution in Timor-Leste, using findings from the justice module included in an extension of the 2007 Timor-Leste Survey of Living Standards (TLSLS2) and a review of relevant social-science literature.
... See More + The extension survey (TLSLSx) revisited a nationally representative subsample of the TLSLS2 between April and October 2008. The respondent for the justice module was randomly selected to be the household head or his/her spouse, and the TLSLSx revisited 1,716 respondents across Timor-Leste's thirteen districts. Survey topics included: (1) access to information and decision making; (2) opinions and knowledge of the law; (3) trust and local institutions; and (4) dispute resolution. Findings from this survey have been summarized in three short briefing papers focusing on land and conflict, youth perspectives, and community trust and decision making.
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