Financial Diaries of Female Entrepreneurs in Uganda

The study randomly assigns 600 women to either:

Control group (C): No intervention

Treatment group 1 (T1) high-frequency surveys: fortnightly interviews with a field researcher where the field researcher records business outcomes. As well as understanding financial behaviour in the previous fortnight, questions will make salient particular dimensions of the business e.g. how much did you lose in sales from lack of change/inventory? How much profit do you make from each sale of item X?

Treatment group 2 (T2) high-frequency surveys plus reports: fortnightly interviews with a field researcher where the field researcher records business outcomes. As well as understanding financial behaviour in the previous fortnight, questions will make salient particular dimensions of the business e.g. how much did you lose in sales from lack of change/inventory? How much profit do you make from each sale of item X?
The field researcher also goes through a report with the respondent, highlighting changes in key business metrics (profit, savings, loans and expenditures) over time as well as a comparison with other respondents in T1 and T2 in terms of that respondent’s percentile ranking in that measure (in percentiles of 10%). For example, the field research will go through the participant’s profits over time, describing if they’ve been rising or falling recently and discussing with the respondent why this might be. The field researcher will also compare the current business outcomes against a previously set goal, for example, your sales last fortnight are 20,000 UGX a month, and your target sales are 50,000 UGX a month, do you plan to do anything differently next week to try to meet your sales goal? The field researcher will also tell the respondent their percentile ranking for profits as compares to other female-owned microenterprises in the same business area e.g. Compared to other businesses operating in this sector, your business has a higher income than 70% of other businesses of this type. This means that if you were one of 100 businesses of this type operated by women like yourself, your income is higher than 70 of them.

2022-08-01

2023-07-31

Business profits, business management index, business innovation index, business practices index, business revenues, business expenses, savings

Details of variable construction will be provided in a pre-analysis plan.

We will recruit 600 female entrepreneurs operating retail businesses with 1 or fewer employees in Kampala, Uganda. The 600 female entrepreneurs will be individually assigned equally (200 to each) to the control group or the two treatment arms. The randomisation will use variables from the baseline survey as strata. The randomization will be done in stata and stratified by business profits, a measure of time preferences, a measure of business management practices and whether the respondent has children under 6 at home. We will followup with the businesses with a midline survey at 6 months and an endline survey at 12 months after the start of the interventions.

We will recruit 600 female entrepreneurs to the study meeting the following inclusion criteria:
The woman owns a business (either alone or jointly with someone else)
The business is in the retail sector
The business has 1 or no employees
The business has been operating for at least 6 months
The business has a permanent location
The business is located in Kampala

Exclusion Criteria: Entrepreneurs over 65 or under 18 will be excluded, as well as anyone with diminished autonomy (physical, mental or other), or if they are not able to communicate with field researchers in one of the official languages of the location of the research.

In our study, we define retail as: A business that sells without transformation new and used goods mainly to the general public for personal or household consumption or utilization, by shops or stalls. e.g grocery store, general store, clothes or shoes sales (new or second hand), household or personal items, beauty or medicine, electronics, furniture or sale of any other type of items without production or alteration.

An enumerator will assess eligibility by approaching businesses in areas of Kampala with many small enterprises and going through a screening questionnaire. All women meeting the eligibility criteria will go through the study consent, and, if they agree to take part in the study, will do the baseline survey. The most likely location for the baseline survey is the respondent’s business. However, enumerators will also be instructed to carry out the survey at a preferred place of the respondent’s choosing.

Through this method, our enumerators will recruit a sample size of 600 firms.

stata statistical software

Individual microentrepreneur

No

600 female entrepreneurs

600 female entrepreneurs

200 female entrepreneurs

Using 0.8 power, and assuming a correlation between baseline and each follow-up round of 0.3 (taken from Riley, 2020) would mean with a sample size of 600 we are powered to detect impacts of 0.21 standard deviations (calculated in Stata using the Sampsi command). The sample size of 600 was selected to ensure we would be powered to detect impacts of 0.21 standard deviations.