SHWALITA, short for ‘Survey of Household Welfare and Labour in Tanzania’, is a 4,000 household survey that randomly assigns different survey modules to its respondents. The survey consists of 3 separate experiments, carefully bundled into one survey:
(i) A consumption experiment in which we developed eight alternative consumption questionnaires which were randomly distributed across 4,000 households. These eight designs vary by method (3 diaries and 5 recall modules), length of reference period in recall modules, and the number of items in the recall modules.
(ii) labour module experiments in which we assess the effect of different ways of collecting labour statistics. It uses two different modules, a long module and a short module, and administers each to either the person him/herself or to someone else in the household answering on their behalf (a proxy respondent). Both proxy respondents and self-reporting respondents are sampled randomly from the roster of household members.
(iii) subjective welfare experiments in which we use an innovative approach to enhance comparability of subjective welfare questions. The technique, developed in political sciences by Gary King, involves the respondent to provide scaled answers on qualitative questions (on a scale of 1 to 5, how do you feel about….). In order to ‘anchor’ the response the respondent is given a ‘vignette’ a short, but powerful story about a fictitious person and is then asked to place this person on the same scale. The placing of the vignette on the same scale allows answers to become more comparable across households, communities and countries.