Impact Evaluation Statistical techniques

[oasisyale]

Hi everyone!

I am new to much of the impact evaluation world and trying to learn it on my own from the internet. I am looking for some advice and help from some of you on a study I am conducting. It is a small research projects based in an Indian village. Here is my brief on analysis I am doing. Can you please advice me whether this is correct and defendable for impact evaluation? The topic is “Impact of Farm Access Roads on Farm Productivity in ABC village of XYZ district in India”.
Firstly, the three research questions are:

• What is the impact of the farm access roads on increase cropping intensity?
• What is the impact of the farm access roads on mechanization of farms?
• What is the impact of the farm access roads on ‘physical burden’ experienced by farmers?

I have data (primary data) collected for 63 farmers, divided in two groups 30 farmers in treatment group and 33 in comparison group to answer these questions. I am not drawing any samples as the population itself is small and study is focused on the impact of farm roads in the village itself (which forms the population). Data collected is as follows for each of the above questions:

• Cropping intensity for both groups after implementation of scheme – data in terms of %age (eg: 143%)
• Mechanization: Number of machines used in farm after implementation of scheme (data in terms of numbers, 4,5,6)
• ‘Physical burden’ experienced by farmers calculated in terms of hours taken to go to and from house to their fields. (data in terms of minutes)

Then, I am calculating means and standard deviations of these three parameters for both treatment and comparison groups. After that, I am conducting a t-test to test the significance of the differences for the above. On basis of this, I will conclude whether there is a significant difference in treatment group and comparison group data.