The estimation of labor inputs on smallholder farms is complex and vulnerable to misreporting.<sup>6</sup> Smallholder farms typically mostly employ family labor, and, so, there is no wage income on which to anchor recall. Written records are rarely kept, and the respondent must rely on recall to report on past events. To arrive at the total amount of labor allocated by a household to farming, the household must accurately report the plots under cultivation, the specific household members who worked on each plot, the activities performed, and the timing and duration of these activities. Farming is a seasonal activity, and work patterns are irregular during the season. Reporting on the typical or average amount of time spent farming requires, after the completion of the season, remembering distant events and performing complicated mental calculations. Alternatively, reporting hours worked in the last seven days at any single point during the agricultural season will not necessarily be indicative of total labor during the season if labor inputs vary greatly during the season.

# **Insights from cognitive psychology**

The design of the survey instrument itself may also influence the quality of data on family farm labor. Considering common survey practices and the features of smallholder farm labor, alongside insights from the social and cognitive psychology literature, there is a particular need for caution in interpreting farm labor data taken from household surveys.

Perhaps the most important aspect in our context is the implications of the recall period. The effects can operate through faults in memory. Forgetting an event is considered more likely as time passes. Alternatively, telescoping, by which a respondent remembers a distant event as if it occurred more recently, can result in memory-driven distortions, particularly in longer recall periods (Sudman and Bradburn 1973). An example is a respondent who worked on the farm 35 days ago, but who reports that he worked on the farm in the past 30 days. Beegle, Carletto, and Himelein (2012) find little evidence that longer recall periods lead to less reliable reporting of hired farm labor in Kenya, Malawi, and Rwanda.

The length of the period of recall in survey responses may be important beyond the implications of memory processes. It can affect how a respondent interprets questions. Schwarz (2007) provides evidence that, in the context of longer recall periods, only salient events are reported. For instance, in a survey in which respondents are asked how many times they have been angry over a period of time, Schwarz finds that, if the recall period is one day, the respondent assumes that minor irritations should be counted. Extending the recall period to one year leads the respondent to believe that only serious incidents of anger should be reported. The study concludes that the shift in inferred pragmatic meaning makes it difficult to disentangle the effects of question interpretation and the effects of forgetting. Das, Hammer, and Sánchez-Páramo (2012) find a

> 6 Measurement problems are not restricted to labor. For instance, intercropping, continuous planting, extended harvest periods, and multiple plots of small sizes and irregular shapes can make reporting on most inputs and outputs difficult. Although several strategies are proposed in the literature to account for mixed-stand crops, no method has yet gained wide acceptance (Fermont and Benson 2011). The introduction of Global Positioning System devices has improved the measurement of landholdings, but the methods for collecting production and input data are not much different now than in the last several decades (Deininger et al. 2011).

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