Misinformation shapes how people see public life, and foreign aid is no exception: people often hold mistaken beliefs about how much of a government’s budget comes from aid, or where aid is spent. This study, part of a doctoral dissertation at the University of Texas at Austin and run in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, asked two questions: when and how can misperceptions of foreign aid be corrected or worsened, and which individual characteristics shape those perceptions?
In Uganda it used a survey experiment, in which respondents were randomly shown different information, from different sources, with or without corrections, so that the effect of each message could be measured.
Our role
Ingenious was responsible for data collection in Uganda. We wrote the data collection training manual, trained the enumerators, and managed fieldwork across four areas of Wakiso District: Nansana Municipality, Kira Municipality, Kyadondo and selected areas of Busiro. Enumerators applied a random-walk respondent selection protocol, with tablets for the programmed survey and daily data syncing.
The study plan set a target of 440 completed interviews with adult residents and 90 photographs of signposts for foreign-aid projects (health, water, education, works and transport, and social development), to be completed within nine working days in May 2024. Because the experiment relied on respondents not knowing its exact purpose, we paid particular attention to how enumerators introduced the study and obtained consent.
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