DISA (Data Integration for Sustainability Assessment). DISA is a set of ‘stackable’ modules for impact assessment for agricultural development in India.
The basic modules are:
1) Demographic data (household composition, educational attainment, gender)
2) Household economics (income data in ten categories, monthly houshold expenditure)
3) Gender-based decision making and empowerment (using the Abbreviated Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index or A-WEAI developed by IFPRI, but language tailored to be regionally appropriate)
4) Time use division using a 24-hour recall
5) Agricultural production, marketing choices and support, exposure to extension services, cost of cultivation, adherence to ‘Organic/natural farming’ practices
6) Ecological foot prints of food production
The above modules have been written, translated to Telugu, pilot-tested, and coded into REDCap (our data collection system). They have been desiged to be comparable to NSSO data where applicable. The A-WEAI is meant to be globally comparable as the most common standard for measuring women’s role in decision making. We’ve currently collected this data from 1,500 households in CSA work areas.
We are in the process of making some translations into Hindi as well, but each module will need to be carefully translated and pilot-tested for each language it will be used in.
Some additional modules that are currently being developed are on diet quality, food insecurity, seed choice and availability, gender-based access to extension support, Public investment in agriculture and access to support services.
The idea is for these modules to be ‘stackable’ after the basic demographics and household economics modules so they can be used in various project areas across the country and remain comparable to measure impact at the household level across domains.