Measuring aspirations: discussion and example from Ethiopia

Tanguy Bernard and Alemayehu Taffesse

No 1190, IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Abstract: Individuals’ aspirations and their consequences for future-oriented behavior have received increased attention in development economics literature in recent years. At this stage, however, each study relies on ad hoc empirical instruments to measure aspirations, thereby limiting comparability of the results obtained. This paper proposes a simple measurement instrument that spans several dimensions aggregated via individual-specific weights. We use a purposefully collected data set to test for the usability, reliability, and validity of the instrument. In addition to standard test-retest procedures, our innovation lies in the use of several randomized tests introduced within the questionnaires themselves, in the enumerators’ qualifications, and in the information set available to respondents. Overall results show strong support for the proposed instrument, with the caveat that collection of such attitudinal data requires experienced enumerators capable of adequately probing respondents.

Keywords: poverty; surveys; methodology; sampling; microeconomic analysis; microeconomics; Ethiopia; Africa; Sub-Saharan Africa; Eastern Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr and nep-dev
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/153895

Related works:
Working Paper: Measuring aspirations: Discussion and example from Ethiopia (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fpr:ifprid:1190

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().