Research that Embraces the Messiness of Real Life

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Of any population in the world, the poor are the least likely to feel free to speak their minds. That raises several challenges for the researchers, enterprises and organizations that use surveys to better understand and meet their unique needs. Too often, open-ended survey questions produce responses that are short, dispassionate, embarrassed or confused. The thornier the topic, the greater the complexity of the response. But though many surveys are designed to avoid or minimize this sort of ambiguity to facilitate data collection at scale, not embracing this “messiness” of real life confounds our efforts to positively impact the lives of the bottom billion.

New tech-enabled research methods may provide a solution to korea whatsapp number data this dilemma by enabling the capture and analysis of open-ended responses — even at the same scale as large surveys.



A Tech-Based Approach to Survey Research
Recently, Fundación Capital teamed with Daryl Collins, author of “Portfolios of the Poor,” and together we put these methods to work to assess the impact of a messaging campaign Fundación Capital had conducted in Paraguay. The campaign included a WhatsApp-based digital advisor, which provided messaging intending to shift gender norms about traditional gender roles, gender violence, child labor, child molestation and the use of contraceptives among low-income women in the country. The digital advisor provided text messages, infographics and short videos via WhatsApp to women enrolled in Abrazo, a national program created in 2005 by the Ministry of Children and Adolescents in Paraguay. Abrazo was created to address the root problems of child labor and street children by providing cash transfer, childcare and other programs for mothers living in poverty. Thanks to support from the International Development Research Centre, Fundación Capital has been supporting the program’s socioeconomic component with the implementation of a gender-transformative poverty graduation program, focused on Abrazo’s women participants. By the end of 2020, we were able to run an early assessment to understand how recipients were reacting to the messaging campaign.

Daryl and her team developed a short questionnaire using a WhatsApp survey application called Outside Voice. This application sends out open-ended questions and allows respondents to send back an audio file recording their responses. The respondent can talk as long as she wants — in fact, the questions and approach are styled to encourage her to talk as long as possible, to generate more data. In this case, because the digital advisor messaging is also delivered via WhatsApp, the women were already used to receiving materials from the digital advisor in this way.