The Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) is engaged in an impact evaluation of the Sustainable Livelihood Program (SLP) of the Department of Social Welfare and Development. Hence, PIDS tapped PSRTI to do the follow-up survey on a sample of treated and control households in collecting data which will be used for estimating the impact of Seed Capital Fund (SCF). This survey is in line with the objective of measuring the impact of the SCF on the welfare of Pantawid households who received SCF assistance in 2018.

The survey operation is currently being conducted and covers around 3,300 households across five regions namely, National Capital Region, Region IV-B, Region VI, Region X, and Region XII. These households were divided into two types: control households and treated households.

The questionnaires constructed by PIDS used in the survey are: (i) the Household Questionnaire which collects data on the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the household and its members; (ii) the SLP Participant Questionnaire which is administered only to treated households and contains questions about the SLP-financed business, Seed Capital Fund and savings, status of the SLP Association and the member’s role in the SLP Association; (iii) the Group Business Questionnaire, administered only to treated households where the SLP participant set up a group-managed business project, and (iv) the Municipal Profile Questionnaire which collects data on the socio-economic characteristics of the municipality.

The recent implementation of an Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) in the entire Luzon area and select regions from Visayas and Mindanao brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, prompted the temporary halt of the survey operations beginning March 16, 2020. While no new responses were recorded in the duration of the community quarantine, the core team maintained constant communication with the field team supervisors and focused on syncing the remaining encoded CAPI responses. The PSRTI core team had successfully collected and cleaned a total of 1,764 (53.45% of 3,300 households) household questionnaires, 1,026 (62.18%) SLP participants, 196 group businesses, and 21 (42.0%) municipal profile questionnaire entries.

PSRTI resumes its survey operations on June 1, 2020. Due to the lack of public transportation and the strict implementation of rules and regulations during the modified community quarantine in the sampled provinces, the PSRTI teams will resume the survey operations through phone interviews. In the resumption, further data will be collected and processed by the PSRTI and will be analyzed by PIDS through propensity score matching approach.