WBG Pioneer

Background/Organizational Context

The Development Economics Survey Unit (DECSU) in the World Bank Group’s Development Economics Vice Presidency supports the production and use of high-quality household survey data in low- and middle-income countries. Through the Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) program, DECSU advances methodological innovation in household survey design, implementation, and data quality, with a focus on improving the evidence base for development policy and research.

As part of this agenda, DECSU is implementing a randomized survey experiment in Bangladesh to test approaches for improving the measurement of climate risk perceptions, adaptation strategies, and the impacts of climate events on households. The project responds to a specific gap: while adaptation is widely recognized as a policy priority, relatively little is known about whether the survey instruments used to track it measure what they claim to measure — with direct consequences for how governments and development institutions understand exposure, vulnerability, and adaptive behavior. The experiment is designed to generate rigorous evidence on how survey design choices shape the measurement of climate risk perceptions and adaptation.

Duties and Responsibilities

The Fellow will join the team supporting an ongoing randomized survey experiment in Bangladesh examining how survey mode, elicitation method, and module design affect the measurement of flood risk expectations, adaptation and impacts. The study follows 1,500 households, stratified by flood exposure, across four rounds of data collection timed to coincide with the monsoon season. Households are interviewed in person at baseline and randomly assigned to phone or in-person interviews in subsequent rounds, alongside additional orthogonal randomization into different methodological experiments. A sub-sample of households also participates in a high-frequency data collection exercise through an interactive survey platform, enabling real-time monitoring of household exposure to and impacts of floods during the monsoon season. Baseline and Round 1 data collection are complete. Round 2 is expected to begin in July 2026 and Round 3 in October 2026, with high-frequency data collection taking place between the two rounds.

The assignment will contribute to the World Bank’s research agenda on improving the measurement of household climate adaptation, while providing the Fellow with hands-on experience in survey methodology, field experiment implementation, data quality monitoring, and applied quantitative research, as well as the opportunity to produce research outputs with methodological and policy-relevant contributions.

The scope of work includes: cleaning, organizing, and constructing analysis-ready datasets from Round 0 and Round 1 climate adaptation modules, and subsequently from Round 2 and Round 3 as they become available; supporting the analysis of high-frequency data; conducting a literature review and contributing to the empirical analysis, drafting, and revision of a methods paper examining how elicitation method, question design, and interview mode affect the measurement of flood risk perceptions; contributing to additional research papers, as agreed with the World Bank team, exploring measurement and correlates of climate adaptation behavior or the impacts of flood exposure on household welfare; supporting the design of the Round 3 survey instrument drawing on findings from earlier rounds; and supporting the dissemination of findings through seminar and conference participation and the preparation of outreach products such as briefs and blog posts.