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T6 Specific Data Collection Methods
T6.1 The Basic Necessities Survey (BNS)
The Basic Necessities Survey (BNS) method was originally developed by Action Aid 6
, and more
recently adapted by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) for social impact monitoring of
protected areas. The BNS method measures poverty change over time according to whether
community members think they are getting more or less ‘basic necessities’ than before the project,
or since the last time the BNS was carried out.
The BNS is a quick and relatively inexpensive way (about US$3-4/household) of measuring and
tracking changes in poverty level. It can also be used to look at other aspects of poverty such as
household access to basic needs, the extent of disparity in this access, and how perceptions of what
is a ‘basic necessity’ change over time (TRANSLINKS, 2007).
The BNS should be implemented in control and treatment (project) communities in order to allow
for attribution, and is therefore a very useful method when used in conjunction with the quasiexperimental
approach assuming that the project expects to have an impact on the general poverty
level of project communities.
Description of Method
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If poverty can be defined broadly as ‘the lack of basic necessities’, a valid approach to poverty
assessment is to check whether a project has resulted in a change in the extent to which people’s
‘basic necessities’ are being met. Unlike income approaches to poverty assessment (i.e., number of
people living on less than US$2/day), there is no a priori definition of ‘basic necessities’, partly since
what can be considered as a basic necessity is likely to vary both by location and over time (within
the same location).
The survey is completed in three steps:
• Identification of possible basic necessities via focus groups;
• Application of the survey; and
• Analysis of the data collected.
6
Especially by Rick Davies (http://www.mande.co.uk), an independent monitoring and evaluation expert
working for ActionAid (TRANSLINKS, 2007).
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Acknowledgement: this BNS methods description is adapted from a version licensed under the Creative
Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
Social Impact Assessment of Land-Based Carbon Projects (1.0) – Part II | 40