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Impact Of Agricultural Market Reforms On Smallholder Farmers In ...

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participate in the survey or if there was no household member present during the survey to answer<br />

knowledgeably about farm production. The total sample included 800 farm families covering the<br />

three regions of the country. The list of EPAs and villages selected in the final sample are<br />

presented in Table 5.1.<br />

Because each farmer in Malawi did not have an equal probability of being selected for the<br />

sample, weights are applied in analyzing the data. The weights (also called expansion factors) are<br />

the inverse of the probability of selection. Thus, if farmers in a region were under-represented in<br />

the sample, the weights compensate for this by giving greater weight to these farms in the<br />

calculation of national averages and percentages. Because the sample was selected in a threestage<br />

process, the calculation of the weighting factor involves three terms:<br />

W<br />

hg<br />

<br />

EPAr<br />

epa<br />

r<br />

V<br />

v<br />

e<br />

e<br />

H<br />

h<br />

vg<br />

vg<br />

where W hg = the weight for household h with head of gender g<br />

EPA r = the total number of EPAs in region r<br />

epa r = the number of EPAs selected for the sample in region r<br />

V e = the total number of villages in EPA e<br />

v e = the number of villages selected for the sample in EPA e<br />

H vg = the total number of households of gender g in village v<br />

h vg = the number of households selected for the sample of gender g in village v<br />

The first term extrapolates from the EPAs selected for the sample to the entire region (North,<br />

Center, and South). The second term extrapolates from the selected villages to the entire EPA.<br />

Note that v e is equal to two for all EPAs in the sample. The third term extrapolates from the<br />

households in the sample to all the households in the village. <strong>In</strong> order to ensure that femaleheaded<br />

households represented 30 percent of the sample (reflecting secondary data about farm<br />

households in Malawi), the weights are different for male- and female-headed households. For<br />

female-headed households, the weight uses the number of female-headed households in the<br />

village (H vg ) divided by the number of female-headed households in the sample (h vg ). The same<br />

procedure is used for male-headed households.<br />

232

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