This manual explains the planning process, technical procedures, and standards used in Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) household surveys. Topics covered include the technical aspects of questionnaire formatting and testing, ways of implementing a sample design, budgeting, and what fieldwork and data management procedures have been successful. A brief section describes how to assess local statistical capacity.

This manual explains the planning process, technical procedures, and standards used in Living Standard Measurement Study (LSMS) household surveys, including what these procedures entail, why they are used, and how they can be implemented. It provides a factual description of different procedures and standards as well as their purpose and an explanation of their distinctions. The report offers explicit instructions, along with examples of ways LSMS survey procedures have been implemented in different countries. Although the lessons presented here are derived from LSMS surveys, many of them are applicable to surveys in general, and especially to those that are complex or especially concerned with quality control. Topics covered in this manual include technical aspects of questionnaire formatting and testing, methods of implementing sample design, and fieldwork and data management procedures that have been successful. The report sketches ideas about which directions to pursue in analyzing data, presents a brief description of how to assess local statistical capacity, and includes sample work plans and budgets to give surveyors estimates of how long each process will take.

Living Standards Measurement Survey Working Paper No. 130.This document presents a set of Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) questionnaires that have been developed for use in the Russian-speaking countries of the former Soviet Union. The questionnaires are available in English and Russian, as well as in an electronic format. The document describes in detail how to modify the questionnaires for use in any specific country. The author guides the questionnaire writer through the modification process, illustrating the important aspects of LSMS surveys, the translation and field-testing procedures, and a section-by-section description of the types of modification that are likely to be required to suit particular goals and circumstances.Also available in Russian : (ISBN 0-8213-3935-4) / Stock No. 13935

For anyone wanting to learn, in practical terms, how to measure, describe, monitor, evaluate, and analyze poverty, this Handbook is the place to start. It is designed to be accessible to people with a university-level background in science or the social sciences. It is an invaluable tool for policy analysts, researchers, college students, and government officials working on policy issues related to poverty and inequality.

This publication presents tools and techniques for measuring service delivery in health and education and people's experiences from the field in deploying these methods. It begins by providing an introduction to the different methodological tools available for evaluating the performance of the health and education sectors. Country specific experiences are then explored to highlight lessons on the challenges, advantages and disadvantages of using different techniques to measure quality in a variety of different contexts and of using the resulting data to affect change. This book is a valuable resource for those who seek to enhance capacity for the effective measurement of service delivery in order to improve accountability and governance and enhance the quality of service delivery in developing countries.