1. RIMS+ surveys:
A tool for project design and evaluation
Nicholas Minot (IFPRI/Uganda)
Atsuko Toda (IFAD/Vietnam)
Nguyen Ngoc Ahn (DEPOCEN)
Presented to IFAD/Rome
From Hanoi, 29 March 2012

2. Outline of presentation
 Background on RIMS
 Changes in RIMS+
 Cost and implementation issues
 Benefits: Results from three RIMS+ surveys in Vietnam
 Summary and conclusions

3. Background on RIMS
Results and Information Management
System (RIMS)
 Provides information at three levels
 1st -level results refer to project activities
and outputs
 2nd -level results relate to project outcomes
and reflect changes in beneficiaries
behavior, improved performance and
sustainability of groups, institutions and
infrastructure
 3rd -level results are associated with project
impact on child malnutrition and household
living standards.
 We focus on the household survey
used to collect third-level results

4. Background on RIMS
RIMS survey guidelines
 Should be implemented for
large, national IFAD projects
 Should be done before, during,
and at end of project
 Sample size: 900 beneficiary
households
 Returning to same households
not recommended
 Concern about concentration of
IFAD program efforts
 Administrative complications of
finding old households

5. Background on RIMS
RIMS questionnaire
 Objective is to measure assets and
child nutrition
 6 pages (plus cover) divided into
three sections
 Section 1 – Household demographics
 Section 2 – Housing, assets, and food
security
 Section 3 – Anthropometry

6. Background on RIMS
Standardization of RIMS
questionnaire
 Ensures comparability across
countries
 Makes analysis relatively quick
 Assures quality
 But little flexibility in questionnaire
design & analysis
 Does not collect intermediary
indicators

7. Changes in RIMS+
Overview of changes
Changes Rationale
1. Expanded questionnaire Collect additional information to diagnose farmer
constraints, improve design of interventions, and
measure impact on intermediate indicators
2. Use of control group Better measurement of impact of project by
controlling for broader changes in rural conditions
3. Additional training and Improve quality of data
supervision
4. GPS to geo-reference Facilitate return to same households (panel) and
households better supervision of enumerators
5. Flexible questionnaire & Address information needs of the IFAD project and
analysis IFAD planning in general

8. Changes in RIMS+
1. Expanded questionnaire (cover + 14 pages)
RIMS+ RIMS New info in RIMS+
A. Member 1. Household + ethnicity, school attendance, & reasons for
characteristics demographics not attending
A. Housing 2. Survey questions + roof material, ownership status, location of
toilet
A. Assets 2. Survey questions + agricultural equipment
A. Land (no info) Farm size, ownership, irrigation, distance
E. Crop production (no info) Production, sales, & prices for 25 crops; cost of
6 inputs
F. Livestock & (no info) Herd size, sales, & costs for 12 types of animals,
fisheries use of vet services, type of feeding

9. Changes in RIMS+
1. Expanded questionnaire (continued)
RIMS+ RIMS New info in RIMS+
G. Extension & (no info) Access to extension, who uses, cooperatives,
market access details of sales, distance to markets
H. Non-farm (no info) Income and business expenses for 11 non-farm
activities income sources, gender roles
I. Food security 2. Survey questions + coping strategies and quality of diet
J. Credit & (no info) Access to credit, info on loans received
borrowing
K. Socio-Economic (no info) Knowledge of and participation in SEDP process
Development Plan
L. Risk & (no info) Perceived risk of six natural disasters
vulnerability
M. Anthropometry 3. Anthropometry No new information

10. Changes in RIMS+
2. Use of control group
 Control group is 300 households that are similar to
beneficiaries but not in project area
 Useful to control for changes in rural areas due to other factors
Beneficiary Control Impact according Actual impact using
households households to current info from control
before-after group
comparison
Example 1 Income rises Income rises 4% Suggests that project Actually, only a 4%
8% due to economic caused 8% increase increase due to project
growth in income
Example 2 Income does Income falls 4% Suggests that project Actually, 4% increase in
not change due to drought had no effect income due to project

11. Changes in RIMS+
2. Use of control group (continued)
Outcome
indicator Beneficiary households
Actual effect
of project Before-after
difference
Control group
is hypothetical
path of beneficiary
households without the
project, based on
growth in control group
Before project After project
Time

12. Changes in RIMS+
3. Additional training and
supervision
 Because questionnaire is longer
and somewhat more complicated,
need for additional training &
supervision of enumerators
 IFPRI & DEPOCEN prepared
detailed enumerator manual
 DEPOCEN provided 5 days of
training plus testing of
questionnaire
 DEPOCEN also provided
additional supervision during data
collection, particularly important
in first week of data collection

13. Changes in RIMS+
4. Use of GPS units
 GPS units are sometimes used in
RIMS surveys
 Main purpose is to make it easier
to find household to interview in
later round of survey
 Additional benefit of verifying
that enumerators have visited
households in village

14. Changes in RIMS+
5. Flexible questionnaire & analysis of results
 Original RIMS is analyzed in a “black box”
 Advantage is analysis is fast, reliable, and comparable
 But little opportunity to customize results for project
 RIMS+ questionnaire can be customized for project
Type of IFAD project Possible customization of questionnaire
Farmer training & Access to extension, sources of info, perception of
extension usefulness, adoption of advice, yield
Linking farmers to Travel time to markets, types of buyers, degree of
market competition, prices received, share sold
Promotion of non-farm Number & composition of NFEs, profitability, training
enterprises needs, perceived constraints, factors affecting success
Improved access to Sources of credit, interest rates paid, use of credit, reasons
credit for use of informal credit, factors affecting repayment rate

15. Changes in RIMS+
5. Flexible questionnaire & analysis of results
 RIMS+ analysis can be customized to address questions
relevant for project design & implementation
 Is access to extension services different for female-headed
farmers?
 Can pepper be successfully grown by small-scale farmers
with limited resources?
 Is targeting landless households more (or less) pro-poor
than targeting farmers with less than 0.5 hectares?
 Is satisfaction with project services higher in one district
than in another?

16. Cost and implementation issues
Expanded questionnaire
 More information and more complicated questionnaire
 Requires additional training and supervision
 Longer interview time (double at least)
 Requires a new data entry program
 Separate data entry in CSPro for 1200 questionnaires
 At least 2 days in preparing CSpro entry data form
 Another 2 days for training in data entry in CSPro in addition to
RIMS training.
 Increased complexity in analysis and reporting

17. Cost and implementation issues
Use of control group
 Increased workload with financial implication (additional 300 non-
project household)
 Implementing survey in non-project area is more difficult due to
logistics, cooperation
 Data entry in both RIMS and CSPro
 RIMS software to enter RIMS core questions for 900 beneficiary households
 Data entry in CSPro for full questionnaire for1200 household sample
 Additional training/supervision
 Project managers do not see immediate benefit

18. Cost and implementation issues
Use of GPS
 Increased training time (1/2 day) and additional time at
household (10 minutes)
 Not easy to use due to language barrier
 Additional burden due to the fact that interviewers already
have to carry weight and scale

19. Cost and implementation issues
Cost estimates
Component First-time costs Per survey costs
Expanded questionnaire in Already carried out under Interview time is
data collection IFAD-IFPRI Partnership approximately doubled
Use of control group No fixed cost Increases field costs by
50-100%
Additional training & Enumerator manual Approximately US$
supervision prepared under 10-15k per survey
Partnership
Use of GPS units Cost to purchase = Modest - GPS units can be
US$ 100 x 20 units = shared across projects or
US$ 2000 rented
Analysis of data Large initial cost of For standard analysis,
preparing analysis negligible. For
programs, already customized analysis,
undertaken by Partnership requires Stata skills

20. Results of Vietnam RIMS+
Questions
 Which crops are pro-poor?
 How does crop commercialization vary across farmers?
 Do female-headed farmers have equal access to modern
inputs?
 How important is income from non-farm activities?
 How to farmers perceive the risks of natural disasters?
 Is food security threatened by crop commercialization?
 How involved are farmers in the preparation of the Socio-
Economic Development plans?
 Will raising farmer income improve child nutrition?

21. Results of Vietnam RIMS+
Which crops are pro-poor?
• Rice is grown by majority of the poor,
but fewer high-income households
• Maize, groundnut, red onion, bananas,
tea, and vegetables are grown by both
poor and non-poor
• Avocado, mango, durian, pepper,
sugarcane, coffee, and cashew are
grown disproportionately by high-
income farms
• This is not to say they can’t be grown
by poor farmers, but any untargeted
support to these crops will not be pro-
poor

22. Results of Vietnam RIMS+
Is input use less among female-headed households?
• Not much evidence that input use per hectare is lower
• But smaller farm sizes lead to smaller crop production and lower
income

23. Results of Vietnam RIMS+
What is the importance of non-farm income?
• Even the 20% of farms with the smallest area (less than 0.10
hectares) earns the bulk of their income from crop production
• 45% of smallest farms rent, sharecrop, borrow, or use illegally
other land

24. Results of Vietnam RIMS+
How do farmers perceive the risk of different natural
disasters?
• Perception of disaster risk varies by province
• Also, perception of likely losses is greater for poor households

25. Results of Vietnam RIMS+
Is food security threatened by commercialization?
• Commercialization is defined as the share of the value of crop
production that is sold
• Relationship holds even after controlling for per capita income
and farm size in regression analysis

26. Results of Vietnam RIMS+
Will raising farmer income improve child nutrition?
5
Z-scores
0
-5
10 12 14 16 18
Log of per capita income
Length/height-for-age Z-score Weight-for-length/height Z-score
lowess haz06 lnpcinc lowess whz06 lnpcinc
• Yes, but effect is weak
• Many other variables influence child nutrition: sanitation, health care,
education, child rearing practices, etc.

27. Summary & conclusions
Advantages of RIMS+ Additional costs
Expanded questionnaire gives much Fixed costs of preparing questionnaire,
more information for diagnosis of manual, and data analysis programs
problems and measuring project- have already been incurred by IFAD-
specific indicators IFPRI Partnership
Control group allows better Per-survey cost is increased 3x by
measurement of impact of project, expanded questionnaire and control
taking into account trends in rural group. GPS and additional quality
areas control also imply costs.
Additional training & supervision Cost of analyzing basic results using
provides higher-quality data existing programs, but customization of
questionnaire or analysis implies
additional costs.
Use of GPS units makes it easier to
revisit same respondents in later
rounds of survey
Ability to customize questionnaire &
analysis to meet project needs

28. Summary & conclusions
When is RIMS+ most suitable?
 RIMS+ surveys probably not suitable for all
IFAD projects because of additional costs
 Conditions under which it is most suitable:
 IFAD project design is flexible, can be revised
in light of new information from survey
 IFAD project focuses on a new topic or new
region, so there is a need for information
 There are gaps in knowledge about farm
household livelihoods and behavior relevant
to project
 IFAD project is relatively large, implying an
adequate M&E budget

29. Summary & conclusions
Additional issues
 Size of control group
 At the moment, 900 treatment to meet standard RIMS
requirement and 300 control
 But typically control group is similar size
 It would reduce costs to develop a Core Module and
additional modules that are selected depending on
project (e.g. agricultural marketing, credit, extension)
 RIMS+ would require additional capacity building for
IFAD project staff
 Project has prepared an enumerator manual and data
entry programs and could also prepare an
implementation guidelines if needed