Ten-Year Impacts of Burkina Faso’s BRIGHT Program

II. EVALUATION DESIGN AND DATA COLLECTION
MATHEMATICA POLICY RESEARCH
The household survey included questions on households’ characteristics and possessions,
children’s educational outcomes (such as enrollment and attendance), parents’ perceptions of
education, and the extent to which any children in the household worked. The young adult
module was a new addition to the 2015 survey; it was administered to all household members
between the ages of 13 and 22. It contained questions about their employment, marriage, and any
children they might have had. The household questionnaire is based on the household survey
instruments used for the 2008 and 2012 surveys carried out as part of the 3-year and 7-year
evaluations of the BRIGHT program and drew heavily from several existing questionnaires
widely used in developing countries, including the Demographic and Health Survey from U.S.
Agency for International Development (USAID), the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey from
United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the Living Standards Measurement Study from
World Bank.
Finally, tests on math and French were administered to all children and young adults ages 6
to 22 who lived in the households interviewed in the household survey, regardless of school
enrollment. 24 These tests were administered immediately after the household survey. The
questions came from grades 1 through 6 Burkina Faso primary education textbooks. A total of
31,419 children took the math assessment and 31,450 children took the French assessment. The
math and French tests administered as part of the current survey were longer and more complex
than the tests administered as part of the three-year and seven-year evaluations of the BRIGHT
program because the children in the current sample are older. The math test for the 2008 survey
included single number identification, counting, greater-than/less-than, and single digit addition
and subtraction. In addition to these competencies, the math test used in the 2012 survey also
tested telling time, two-digit number identification, multiplication, two-digit addition and
subtraction, converting minutes to hours, fraction identification, and parallel line identification.
The math test used in the 2015 survey tested not only the aforementioned math competencies, it
included more complex multiplication and division, converting metric measurements, and
determining percentages. The French test for the 2008 survey included letter identification,
reading simple words, and filling blanks in sentences. In addition to these competencies, the
French test used in the 2012 survey also included letter identification with accents, matching
words to pictures, identifying sports words, verb tenses, and noun forms (number and gender).
The French test used in the 2015 survey tested respondents not only on these competencies but
on more complex grammar concepts, such as prefixes, suffixes, synonyms and the imperfect verb
tense.
We also created a comprehensive school survey to collect information on the characteristics
of primary schools located within 10 kilometers of the sampled villages that children from the
household survey reportedly attended and all secondary schools located in the sampled
departments. This survey collected information from 332 primary schools and 103 secondary
the data files was entered as all zeroes. The ninth school not included in the analysis file is because we were unable
to verify the data during a data verification process.
24
All children were included because children enrolled due to BRIGHT would be not be enrolled in unselected
villages. Because we have no way to identify which children in the unselected villages would enroll in a BRIGHT
school if they were offered the opportunity, we surveyed all children in the village. This includes children who
would not enroll even in a BRIGHT school, but it avoids the selection bias that would result from other strategies—
such as surveying only children enrolled in school.
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