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Field
Trial End Date
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Before
May 31, 2025
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After
December 31, 2025
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Field
Last Published
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Before
February 14, 2024 11:57 AM
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After
February 01, 2025 12:56 AM
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Intervention End Date
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Before
November 29, 2024
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After
July 01, 2024
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Primary Outcomes (Explanation)
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Before
The training aims to teach farmers how to adapt their agriculture with practices that benefit both harvests and the environment. To assess take-up, we count the number of practices adopted and the land size on which these are implemented.
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After
The training aims at teaching farmers how to adapt their agriculture with practices that benefit both harvests and the environment. To assess take up, we count the number of practices adopted and the degree to which these are implemented (both specially and across plants). For a given practice, the farmers considered for evaluation will only be those that produced the given value chain pre-intervention.
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Field
Experimental Design (Public)
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Before
This randomized control trial (RCT) will compare the impact of Farmer Field School (FFS) to a control condition with no intervention. After listing and screening by the implementing partner, the research team will then make a randomised allocation to the treatment or control condition as well as select a sample for inclusion in the survey component. The survey treatment and control sub-samples will be balanced between arms on gender.
The sampling lists for the survey will then be sent to the survey team for a field survey without disclosure of the treatment allocation. During the field survey, farmers will be consented with recorded verbal or written documentation. At the end of the field survey in each area, lists of the farmers to be treated in each area will be sent to the implementation organization in order to begin intervention activities.
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After
This randomized control trial (RCT) will compare the impact of Farmer Field School (FFS) to a control condition that receives no intervention. After listing and screening by the implementing partner, the research team made a randomized allocation on the farmer level to the treatment or control condition and selected a sample for inclusion in the survey component. The survey treatment and control sub-samples were intended to be balanced between arms on gender.
Baseline process: The sampling lists for the survey were sent to the survey team for a field survey without disclosure of the treatment allocation. During the field survey, farmers consented with recorded verbal or written documentation. At the end of the field survey in each area, lists of the farmers to be treated in each area will bewere sent to the implementation organization in order to begin intervention activities. Due to delays in receipt of the sampling lists, an in-person baseline survey was not conducted in 3 out of the initially 4 planned sites in Anosy. Due to further delays in implementation in these 3 areas, these were dropped from evaluation, resulting in a reduced sample size and the evaluation taking place in 10 FFS sites (see details below).
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Planned Number of Clusters
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Before
13 sites
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After
10 sites
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Planned Number of Observations
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Before
960 farmers
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After
800 farmers at endline
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Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
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Before
Sample size by treatment arm will vary base on the number of eligible farmers identified by site, as areas with few farmers will have to have a smaller control group. At this time we estimate that there will be 538 farmers in the treatment group and 422 in the control group.
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After
Sample size by treatment arm will vary based on the number of eligible farmers able to be interviewed by site. At this time we estimate that there will be completed surveys from 435 farmers in the treatment group and 365 in the control group.
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Field
Power calculation: Minimum Detectable Effect Size for Main Outcomes
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Before
The trial is powered at 90% to detect a standardized effect size of 0.28 in the revenue derived from agriculture by FFS participants compared to controls, in line with the average effect reported in Waddington et al. (2014). This person-randomized, blocked trial will include 13 FFS sites. The sample will vary per site in line with the number of farmers who are able to be recruited, with a maximum of 80 survey participants per FFS. The number of survey participants will be capped at 960 participants. This includes 6% additional sample to account for survey attrition and loss of power caused by slightly unequal allocation to treatment arms. We assumed an alpha of 0.05, an effect size variability of 0.04, and covariates and the blocking variable each explaining 0.15 of the variability in the final model. This sample size is also sufficient to measure the larger effect sizes seen in number of improved agricultural techniques practiced (Waddington et al., 2014). Due to the randomization procedure, effects can be causally attributed to the treatment with FFS.
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After
The trial is powered at 90% to detect a standardized effect size of 0.40 in the number of CSA practices taken up by FFS participants compared to controls, in line with the midpoint of the impact of studies with medium risk of bias (0.22) and overall (0.63) reported in Waddington et al. (2014). This person-randomised, blocked trial will include 10 FFS sites with an estimated 80 completed surveys completed in each area, for a total completed sample of 800 participants. To account for survey attrition, we have included 58 additional farmers in our sample. We assumed an alpha of 0.05, an effect size variability of 0.05, and covariates and the blocking variable each explaining 0.1 of the variability in the final model. This sample size is also sufficient to measure the larger effect sizes seen in the number of improved agricultural techniques practiced (Waddington et al., 2014). Due to the randomization procedure, effects can be causally attributed to the treatment with FFS.
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Field
Keyword(s)
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Before
Agriculture, Behavior, Education, Firms And Productivity, Gender, Health, Labor, Welfare
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After
Agriculture, Behavior, Firms And Productivity, Gender, Health, Labor, Welfare
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Field
Secondary Outcomes (Explanation)
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Before
The training aims to teach farmers how to adapt their agriculture to practices that benefit both harvests and the environment. A short knowledge test will be used to assess knowledge transfer.
Some of the taught practices should directly impact farmers’ food security. Food security will be measured on an individual level using the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES/FAO) and on the household level using the World Food Program’s Food Consumption Score Module.
Though the full effect of the promoted FFS activities will not take place within the evaluation period, adopted practices may lead to a reallocation of labor within the household and, therefore, affect income in the short term.
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After
The training aims to teach farmers how to adapt their agriculture to practices that benefit both harvests and the environment. A short knowledge test will be used to assess knowledge transfer. Knowledge questions will only be evaluated for the value chains that the farming household had produced prior to the intervention.
Some of the taught practices should directly impact farmers’ food security. Food security will be measured on an individual level using the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES/FAO) and on the household level using the World Food Program’s Food Consumption Score Module.
Though the full effect of the promoted FFS activities will not take place within the evaluation period, adopted practices may lead to a reallocation of labor within the household and, therefore, affect income in the short term.
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