The sample households that were involved in agricultural activities (through ownership and/or cultivation of land, and/or ownership of livestock) were administered the Agriculture Questionnaire. Handheld global positioning system (GPS)-based locations and land areas of the plots were recorded. The Agriculture Questionnaire also solicited information on physical characteristics, labor and non-labor input use, and crop cultivation and production at the plot level, separately for the reference rainy and dry seasons.<sup>8</sup> Depending on the timing of the interview, the reference rainy season could have been 2008/09 or 2009/10, while the reference dry season could have been 2009 or 2010. We rely on the observed plot level distribution of rainy season maize yield (i.e. kilogram-equivalent production per hectare), and compute the median maize yield in each community as the second outcome variable.<sup>9</sup> Pertinent to our research, the Community Questionnaire was administered to a focus group concerning a village, a group of villages or an urban ward existing in each IHS3 EA. In rural Malawi, a typical EA corresponds roughly to 2 to 3 villages, approximately 250 households. During the IHS3 field work, the boundaries of each EA were clearly established through the use of maps that were produced by the NSO Cartography Department. The leader of the mobile survey team that was assigned to a given EA was responsible for administering the Community Questionnaire. The team leader was instructed to form a focus group that was composed of 5 to 15 long-term knowledgeable residents of the community and that was diverse in terms of sex, age, religion and ethnicity. The focus group members typically included the village chief(s) and the advisors to the village chief(s), a subset of members of the village development committee (VDC) or the area development committee (ADC), the local school headmaster and/or teacher, the health worker(s), the agricultural extension officer, the leaders of religious and political entities, the local merchants, the leaders and members of community-based organizations/committees, and members of community policing.

Table 1 presents descriptive statistics on the composition of the focus groups as captured in the data. The size of the focus group ranges from four to 12 with a mean of 8.5. At the community level, 91 percent of the community focus groups had at least one of village chief, group village

> - The report could be accessed publically from <u>http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTLSMS/Resources/3358986 1233781970982/5800988-1271185595871/IHS3_Report.pdf.</u>

> 8 A plot was defined as a continuous piece of land on which a unique crop or a mixture of crops is grown, under a uniform, consistent crop management system, not split by a path of more than one meter in width. Plot boundaries were defined in accordance with the crops grown and the operator. The IHS3 identified 18,917 plots that were reported to have been owned and/or cultivated during the reference rainy season.

> 9 The standard approach to collecting production data at the plot-crop level is to allow for non-standard production measurement units to be specified. To obtain the kilogram-equivalent production values, the authors used a conversion factor database that was constructed following the IHS3 fieldwork through a market survey that visited 22 markets throughout the country, chosen on the basis of spatial crop marketing patterns. This database provides kilogram-equivalent weight estimates for non-standard measurement unit-crop combinations observed in the data. For maize specifically, the Agriculture Questionnaire solicited some information on the state of the crop, specifically whether reported production was shelled or unshelled. The conversion factor database also provides a shelled (i.e. grain) equivalent conversion for unshelled maize production so that all production could be expressed in shelledequivalent terms.

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