Partnership for Resilience and Economic Growth (PREG) Initiative in Northern Kenya II: Impact Evaluation Report of Recurrent Monitoring Survey 2019-2020

Kenya’s arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL) region has been adversely impacted by a legacy of drought emergencies, human conflict, marginalization by the government, and poverty. USAID’s Partnership for Resilience and Economic Growth (PREG) initiative brings together multiple humanitarian and development partners who work with the Kenya National Drought Management Authority and county governments to coordinate resilience and economic growth activities to strengthen resilience among vulnerable pastoralist communities in nine of Kenya’s 23 ASAL counties. The PREG model of collaboration enables partners to minimize redundancies, promote synergies, and achieve multi-partner collaboration and coordination. As part of the impact evaluation (IE) for the PREG II initiative, this report documents the analysis of data from the first year of the Recurrent Monitoring Survey (RMS) in nine ASAL counties. The objective of the RMS is to provide real-time data on household resilience capacity during the course of—or in the immediate aftermath of—an actual shock with the goals of understanding the nature of the shock, how households are coping with shocks, and the degree of their resilience to the effects of shocks. The RMS uses a mixed-methods design that includes both a quantitative and qualitative component. The RMS sample is a subset of households surveyed at baseline (i.e., a panel survey) involving a total of 838 eligible households across the nine counties. The sample size remained relatively stable over the data collection rounds, ranging from approximately 720 to 750 households, depending on the round. RMS data was collected in four rounds over a period of approximately 10 months: September 2019, Nov/Dec 2019, March/April 2020, and June 2020. Round 4 (June 2020) took place in the context of COVID-19, and data collection shifted from face-to-face to phone-based interviews. The RMS survey instrument and qualitative tools were adapted to accommodate the phone-based modality and to incorporate questions related to COVID-19. Based on the baseline survey design, the RMS sample was stratified into treatment (high-intensity) and control (low-intensity) groups in a two-stage selection process. The sampling frame for the treatment group comprised all sub-locations within the five high-intensity counties in which USAID-funded project activities by PREG II implementing partners were reported to have occurred (Isiolo, Marsabit, Garissa, Wajir, and Turkana counties). The sampling frame for the control group comprised the four sub-locations (Baringo, Mandera, Samburu, and Tana River Counties) where WFP and/or other USAID programming activities had taken place, particularly education, natural resource management (NRM), and health/nutrition interventions. At the time of IE design and as the program was beginning implementation, USAID considered that their programming in these low-intensity counties was not directly focused on addressing multiple dimensions of resilience.