Quantifying the Qualitative: Eliciting Expert Input to Develop the Multidimensional Poverty Assessment Tool

Abstract

This article discusses the participatory creation of the Multidimensional Poverty Assessment Tool (MPAT), a survey-based thematic indicator developed in China and India. The core of the article focuses on the use of expert elicitation to inform the construction of MPAT’s household and village surveys, the cardinalisation of survey responses, and the weighting scheme design. This is followed by a discussion of the potential pitfalls of expertise in development, the decision not to aggregate MPAT into an index, creating locally relevant poverty lines, and ideas for future research. The article closes with a summary of lessons learned.

Acknowledgements

This article benefited from extensive referee comments for which the authors are grateful. Many people offered their time and energy to support MPAT’s 2008–2009 development, especially Thomas Rath, as well as Rudolph Cleveringa, Mattia Prayer-Galletti, Shaheel Rafique, Roxanna Samii, Sun Yinhong and other colleagues at IFAD and other agencies (acknowledged in detail in the MPAT Book at http://www.ifad.org/mpat/resources/book.pdf). The corresponding author also extends thanks to Jeff Romm for his support of this work and sage advice. This work was originally funded by IFAD, DFID, Fulbright and government agencies in China and India.

Notes

^1. For more information, see: http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/indices/.

^2. For more information, see: http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/mpi/.

^3. Both authors have also referred to this cardinalisation processes as ‘normalisation’ in past publications, since, while most of the MPAT survey items fall on categorical scales, they are not always ordinal/linear.

^4. Board members were not financially compensated for participation (except for travel and lodging expenses for those who attended workshops). The interested reader may consult the acknowledgements section (pp. 12–17) of the MPAT Book (http://www.ifad.org/mpat/resources/book.pdf) for a list of contributors.

^5. Available in Annex I of the MPAT Book (http://www.ifad.org/mpat/resources/book.pdf).

^6. In the interests of transparency and reproducibility, all of the survey item cardinalisations and aggregation rules are presented in the MPAT User’s Guide (available on the http://www.ifad.org/mpat website); in light of the debatable nature of the cardinal scores and weightings MPAT users are also encouraged to examine and change them as appropriate (to create a customized MPAT).

^7. For MPAT v.6, this was called ‘Gender Equality’; in subsequent iterations it was extended and renamed ‘Gender and Social Equality’.