Methodology
From the start, impact transparency was a core part of Seedloans. That’s why we incorporated continuous surveying of participating farmers before, during and after every planting season with quantitative and qualitative interviews. We aim to build an impactful business that is improving female farmers’ lives in the complexity needed to make a measurable, meaningful difference.
Moreover, we recognize that extensive surveys are a burden for beneficiaries, and thus continuously improved the surveys with surveyees and inspired by Acumen’s Lean Data methodology.
Quantitative data for our analytics team and reports is collected in digital surveys as part of the seed give-out (before the season) and repay day (after the season) with the help of Seedloans employees who are closely in contact with the village leaders and farmers. Qualitative data is collected through personal and phone interviews during and after the planting seasons.
Consequently, collected data could be positively biased, as beneficiaries might have hoped for benefits of better reporting. In attempts to prevent this, we ask neutral questions concerning both, negative and positive outcomes, and where possible correct data with similarly framed questions post-harvest. Although extensive pre- and post-season surveying has been done, we do not currently have the capacity to run control group surveys, but this is planned for the future. In addition, our sample size and depth of research might not be high enough to report “impacts”, instead we report “outcomes” and “learnings” and outcome metrics by asking farmers directly for their opinion.