Target Beneficiary Identification via Lottery Protocol

In Simple Words

Imagine asking someone to choose one family member to receive a $500 jackpot if their name is drawn from a hat. The person they name reveals who matters most to their financial planning, giving researchers a clear target for follow-up interviews.

Research question

Migrants often send money to multiple individuals across extended social networks, making it difficult for researchers to objectively determine which recipient household is most central to the migrant's primary financial and welfare goals.

Participants

4,458 Filipino migrants naming target beneficiaries in the Philippines, resulting in 2,075 target household endline surveys.

Study Design

Administration of a $500 lottery prize nomination protocol in the baseline survey to identify the "target beneficiary" and paired "target household" for endline evaluation.

Results

Successfully identified key target household respondents—48% parents, 20% siblings, 10% spouses, and 12% children—establishing paired migrant-household linkages for 1,377 households at endline.

Takeaway

Use conditional prize nomination protocols during baseline migrant surveys to objectively pinpoint primary recipient households for downstream evaluation.

Read alongside the research

Plain-English glossary

Original explanations, informed by the references below. Examples are illustrations, not data from the studies above. The research text stays unchanged.

Follow-up

Collecting more information about participants later in a study to see what has happened to them. The term can also mean the length of time researchers keep track of them.

ExampleResearchers interview the same workers three months after a programme ends. That later interview is a follow-up.

GET-IT glossary · Follow-up ↗Read more about follow-up →

Baseline

The starting measurements in a study. Researchers use these to compare what participants were like at the start with what happens later.

ExampleBefore a training programme starts, researchers measure workers’ earnings. That first measurement is the baseline.

GET-IT glossary · Baseline characteristics ↗Read more about baseline →

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