Description
The majority of global donors funding efforts to combat the HIV and AIDS epidemic have adopted a common strategy: the sponsoring of locally based programmes, a large proportion of which are managed by community based organisations. Despite the ubiquity of this tsrategy little evidence exists endorsing its effectiveness.
The Assignment
The World Bank and DFID appointed ICF Macro, and FeedbackRA as sub-contractor, to conduct a study in Kenya and Nigeria to test the hypothesis that community based reponse is effective in addressing the effects of HIV and AIDS. The evaluation set out to measure the effects of community based responses on various outcomes of the HIV and Aids epidemic, including health outcomes; knowledge, attitudes and behavior; gender and child rights; and community mobilisation. The objectives were to provide an evidence base for funding decisions in the battle against the epidemic, as well as developing a replicable methodology for testing similar hypotheses in subsequent studies.
Methodology
The evaluation was designed as a quasi-experiment in which treatment and comparison communities were purposively selected and matched, based on the measured extent of their community based response activities. Data was collected from selected communities via a household survey for which households representing the communities were randomly selected. Analysis of survey data involved index development and testing hypotheses by comparing differences in effects measured across the treatment and comparison groups. Survey data was supplemeted by qualitative data collected in interviews with key informants. The study also included a cost-tracking exercise.
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