TY - BOOK ID - 133614246 TI - Can We Trust Shoestring Evaluations? PY - 2012 PB - Washington, D.C., The World Bank, DB - UniCat KW - Baseline survey KW - Economic Theory & Research KW - Housing & Human Habitats KW - Macroeconomics and Economic Growth KW - Poor areas KW - Poverty Monitoring & Analysis KW - Recall error KW - Retrospective data KW - Science Education KW - Scientific Research & Science Parks KW - Social Development KW - China UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:133614246 AB - Many more impact evaluations could be done, and at lower unit cost, if evaluators could avoid the need for baseline data using objective socio-economic surveys and rely instead on retrospective subjective questions on how outcomes have changed, asked post-intervention. But would the results be reliable? This paper tests a rapid-appraisal, "shoestring," method using subjective recall for welfare changes. The recall data were collected at the end of a full-scale evaluation of a large poor-area development program in China. Qualitative recalls of how living standards have changed are found to provide only weak and biased signals of the changes in consumption as measured from contemporaneous surveys. Importantly, the shoestring method was unable to correct for the selective placement of the program favoring poor villages. The results of this case study are not encouraging for future applications of the shoestring method, although similar tests are needed in other settings. ER -