The evaluation considers a range of outcomes of the ADA program, including production and profitability, investment and technology adoption, employment and wages, and access to credit and markets. Though it was originally designed as a rigorous impact evaluation that incorporated a randomized design, the evaluation was not able to undertake a rigorous statistical
analysis of the program on these outcomes for a number of reasons, including the small overall size of the program, changes during implementation that compromised the original evaluation design, and the timing of the evaluation. Instead, the evaluation uses a mixed methods approach combining qualitative data with descriptive quantitative analysis to assess the impact of the project.
Qualitative data collection included focus group discussions and in-depth interviews that collected detailed information from a total of 69 respondents. Respondents were recruited from among those who responded to the ADA survey and were grouped together by type of grantee (PP, VA/VCI, and FSC as separate groups) and by characteristics of interest based on responses to the ADA survey (those that reported an increase in income, those that didn't respond to income questions, those that closed their businesses, exporters, and machinery ring grantees).These interviews and focus groups were transcribed and analyzed using the specialized software package NVivo to systematically categorize responses and identify commonalities. Themes of interest to the evaluation were identified and then coded in all of the transcriptions. Summaries of responses by code and respondent type were completed and interesting cases were highlighted, providing some concrete examples of project results and/or feedback that also served in helping interpret the quantitative data.