Development Evaluation of ICT for Development/Telecenter Projects Using Propensity Score Matching

Irrespective of quantitative or qualitative, ex-post evaluation techniques proposed in telecenter literature suffer from the drawback of non-experimental design that does not isolate the outcome of a treatment from other possible influences. Ex-ante experimental design is ideal as controlled experimentation directly co-relates the outcome to treatment, but not practical everywhere. Difficulties in the initial identification of beneficiaries and formation of control groups make robust experimental design not feasible.A compromise is presented with quasi experimental design. When the evaluator has little or no control over the allocation of the treatments or other factors being studied, this is a more feasible approach. The key difference in this empirical approach is the absence of random assignment. This study experiments the use of the Propensity Score Matching, a quasi experimental approach for the evaluation of ICT4D/telecenter efforts. While reducing the bias of treatment-effect estimates from observational studies, it compares the outcome shown by the treatment group with that of a ‘comparison group', instead of a control group to answer the counterfactual question ‘What would have happened to those who did receive treatment, if they had not received treatment?' A case study is presented for illustration purposes