Bangladesh BIDS -Baseline Survey for Vulnerable Group Development Program

Title: Baseline Survey for Vulnerable Group Development Program

Details:

Vulnerable Group Development (VGD) Program is a multi-dimensional food aid program. The target group of the VGD program is mainly the destitute women. These include landless and asset less women who are widowed, divorced, abandoned, having under-nourished children, lactating mothers and women with handicapped husband etc. 

The government of Bangladesh intends to carry out a baseline survey at the onset of the       2011-2012 VGD cycle. The present study will be based on primary data collection and interviews in each of the country’s seven divisions. In each division, the sampling frame will comprise two Districts, four Upazilas and four Unions. At the first stage, all the districts in each division will be listed and two districts will be selected in consultation with DWA (i.e. a total of 14 districts). At the second stage, all the upazilas in the sample district will be listed and 2 upazilas will be selected purposively according to the guideline provided by DWA. This will give a total of 28 selected upazilas from the 14 sample districts. At the third stage, from each sample upazila, one union will be selected randomly. This will give a total of 28 selected unions from the seven divisions. At the final stage, 29 beneficiaries will be selected from each union at random from the list of VGD beneficiaries. Thus, a total of 812 beneficiaries will be selected from 28 sample Unions.

The control group will be selected from the same unions where the beneficiary households are located and they will be selected in such a way that the non-beneficiaries belong to similar socio-economic category as that of the program beneficiaries, but having no involvement with any safety net programs. From each union/cluster, selection of 10 control households is proposed. Thus, there will be 10 non-beneficiaries compared to 29 beneficiaries from each of the selected unions. This implies that in the process of selecting 28 unions/clusters from the seven divisions, we will collect information covering 812 program beneficiaries and 280 non-beneficiaries.

Both qualitative (FGD, case study) and quantitative (questionnaire survey) data will be utilized for the baseline survey.

The study is sponsored by Department of Women Affairs (DWA)