Challenges to Rural Poverty Reduction in Viet Nam - Oxfam Blogs

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transparency, and accountability to bear on managing and monitoring
sustainable poverty alleviation.
The fifth round of poverty monitoring in 2011 studied multi-dimensional poverty, social
security, the effect of high prices, labour mobility, educational services, agricultural
extension services, participatory planning and decentralized financing at commune level.
Annually repeated surveys
The core groups visited the same surveyed communes and villages each year and,
using the same household questionnaire, conducted in-depth interviews with the same
households, and carried out the wealth ranking exercises using the same list.
Participatory field monitoring at each site took six to seven days. The main data collection
tools were:
Household questionnaires: In each village 30 households were selected for the annual
survey (in total, 60 households from two villages in each commune). A simple random
technique (e.g. random card drawing) was used to select the households for interview.
The questionnaire focused on background information about household members, some
indicators of the household’s living standards, changes in household’s livelihood, and
assessed access to services, markets and degree of civic participation. 600 household
questionnaires were completed at ten monitoring points, providing data from 344 poor
households and 256 non-poor households (as determined by the GOV poverty standard
at time of survey). Of the 600 respondents, 346 were male, 254 female, 148 Kinh, and
452 from other ethnic groups such as H’mong, Thai, Tay, Kh’mu, Van Kieu, Ede, Raglai,
and Kh’mer.
The core groups revisited all households interviewed in 2009 to maintain a panel sample.
However, by 2011, of the 600 households sampled in 2010, 12 households had to be
replaced due to change of residence or adults absent from home at the time of this
survey. In order to check the reliability of 2011 data against that of previous years,
the research team ran a data analysis for 588 panel households and obtained a result
with little difference from data obtained from 600-household samples. Data used in this
report comes from the sample of 600 households.
Data obtained from household interviews are presented in the form of descriptive
tabulation and disaggregated into poor and non-poor households using results from
the poverty review in each locality at the time of the survey. One exception is Cu Hue-
Dak Lak, which has no disaggregated data for poor households because the number of
poor households in the sampling was too small (only two poor households out of the 60
households surveyed in Cu Hue-Dak Lak).
In-depth interview for case studies: Eight to ten typically poor and near-poor households
from each village were interviewed to obtain detailed information about trends of
poverty, disadvantages and risks faced, gender relations, and their level of participation
in programmes and projects. 541 in-depth interviews were conducted with households.
Group discussions: These were conducted with commune officials, core groups from
villages (including village officials, representatives from mass organizations, and
knowledgeable villagers), and local resident groups including men’s groups, women’s
groups, poor groups, and children’s groups. Participatory Rural Assessment (PRA) tools
- such as household wealth ranking, timelines, cause-effect diagrams, mobility mapping