Measurement

Beliefs, expectations and preferences play a major role in decision-making processes. Yet economists have had a long-standing preference for studying peoples' actual choices and decisions rather than their stated intentions or subjective reports of preferences and expectations. This is not without reason, given the difficulties in extracting accurately such information. Recently, however, important advances have been made in the measurement of stated responses and preferences.

Working in developing countries and designing questionnaires and surveys affords an important opportunity to introduce new measurement tools and test them. EDePo has contributed to this important strand of research with a number of projects, such as the measurement of social capital through experimental public goods games in Colombia, and the measurement of attitudes, preferences and beliefs in the analysis of a social welfare program in Colombia. Particular attention has been paid to the measurement of subjective expectations. We are piloting various ways of measuring the subjective probability distribution of longevity, income, returns to education, and returns to investment in dairy activities, in settings such as Mexico, India and Mongolia.

EDePo is also engaged in the validation of a number of psychometric tools commonly used to measure the developmental level of infants and very young children. The aim is to validate, against a sophisticated instrument that can be considered as a gold standard, an alternative set of instruments that can be applied at scale more easily and at a lower cost. These measurements are particularly important in studies of early childhood development and are crucial to evaluate interventions or track the status of particular populations in a cost-efficient manner.