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Cluster Randomized Trial of Social Accountability Interventions in Cambodia

Last registered on February 20, 2017
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Cluster Randomized Trial of Social Accountability Interventions in Cambodia
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0001995
Initial registration date
February 20, 2017

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
February 20, 2017, 1:55 AM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country
Cambodia
Region

Primary Investigator

Name
Andrew Beath
Affiliation
World Bank
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Pham Thu Trang
PI Affiliation
Contact Investigator
PI Name
Wei-Ting Yen
PI Affiliation
Ohio State University
Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2017-02-27
End date
2019-12-31
Keywords
Education, Governance, Health
Additional Keywords
Social Accountability
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Abstract
Despite a decade of rapid economic growth, the access of Cambodian villagers to public services and facilities is still among the lowest in the region. Such failures in service delivery are considered by development agencies and researchers to be at least partially due to limited citizen engagement with local public institutions, which in turn reduces the responsiveness of service providers to the needs of the population. In order to enhance the accountability of service providers and local officials and, as a result, improve the quality of service delivery, the Cambodian government, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and bilateral donors have – with assistance from the World Bank through the Voice and Action Program (VAP) – developed the Social Accountability Framework (SAF). Whereas evaluations of social accountability interventions in other contexts indicate that such interventions have been unsuccessful due to a failure to provide service providers and local officials with incentives to change their behavior, the design of the SAF builds on lessons from the body existing research by providing for coordinated interventions by both state and non-state actors. The Voice and Action Program (VAP) Impact Evaluation (VAP-IE) will use a randomized controlled trial conducted across 42 districts in 15 provinces of Cambodia to determine whether the coordinated interventions mandated by SAF improve the quality of educational, health, and commune services provided to villagers in rural Cambodia and increase villagers’ engagement with local government. Evidence from the VAP-IE will be used by national authorities, NGOs, bilateral donors, and the World Bank to inform future funding and design decisions related to the National Decentralization Reform. The VAP-IE is also expected to contribute to general knowledge on the efficacy of social accountability interventions by providing a rigorous assessment of whether an innovative program that coordinates interventions by state and non-state actors can be successful in enforcing accountability and improving the quality of service delivery.
External Link(s)
ISAF-Demand Side Guidelines

Registration Citation

Citation
Beath, Andrew, Pham Thu Trang and Wei-Ting Yen. 2017. "Cluster Randomized Trial of Social Accountability Interventions in Cambodia." AEA RCT Registry. February 20. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.1995-1.0
Former Citation
Beath, Andrew, Pham Thu Trang and Wei-Ting Yen. 2017. "Cluster Randomized Trial of Social Accountability Interventions in Cambodia." AEA RCT Registry. February 20. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/1995/history/14172
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The project has three main interventions. The first is "Facilitation and Capacity Building", which will be achieved through training community accountability facilitators (CAFs). CAFs will facilitate an inclusive environment between service providers and service users. The government will also provide capacity development to local authorities and service providers to promote social accountability and effective engagement with citizens.

The second intervention is "Accessing to Information and Budget". The intervention is done through Information for Citizens (I4C) Package. The I4C Package include simple, user-friendly posters with recent (and frequently-updated) information on the commune budget, work hours, service fees and other related rights and responsibilities of service providers and service users.

The third intervention is "Citizen Monitoring". CAFs will facilitate meetings with community representatives, who collectively assess the performance of the respective commune council, health center and primary school, prioritize their concerns, and identify solutions to citizens’ prioritized concerns, and produce Joint Accountability Action Plans (JAAPs) based on those solutions. JAAPs will be publicly disseminated at district-level media events, presented at the District Integration Workshop (DIW), and will (hopefully) be incorporated in the Community Investment Plan developed during the DIW.
Intervention Start Date
2017-04-01
Intervention End Date
2018-12-31

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
The success of the interventions – which are defined ultimately by improvements in health, education, and other public service outcomes – are predicated on the improvement of the quality of services as a result of changes in behavior by state actors (local authorities and service providers).
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
21 of 42 districts will be randomly selected to receive I-SAF activities implemented by NGOs. Implementation of I-SAF activities in these 21 districts will commence in 2017 and conclude in 2018. Activities in the 21 districts assigned to the control group will occur following the completion of the endline survey in 2018. The 42 districts contributed by respective NGOs will satisfy the following eligibility criteria: districts that have not received any SAF interventions in 2015 and 2016; districts that NGOs and the government have capacity to deliver SAF interventions to if they have to; districts that NGOs and the government are willing to postpone SAF interventions for a period of two years if assigned to the control group.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
To increase the possibility of achieving statistical balance between the treatment and the control group and to enable inference over conditioning effects, a matched-pair randomization is employed to assign treatment. Per the procedure, districts were matched with other districts in the sample of 42 districts based on the Mahalanobis distance between aggregates of the following variables extracted from the 2010 census: district population; proportion of communes with electricity; share of population in agriculture; number of communes in district; and a dummy variable for each province.
Randomization Unit
district-level randomization
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
42 districts
Sample size: planned number of observations
3660 households; 840 local leaders (including 168 commune chiefs, 168 school directors, 168 health center staff, and 336 village chiefs)
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Treatment district: 21
Control district: 21
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
The Human Research Protection Program is responsible at The Ohio State University
IRB Approval Date
2017-03-10
IRB Approval Number
1
Analysis Plan

Analysis Plan Documents

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials