Rationale

The ADP was launched in 2006 as a recommendation of the Marrakech Action Plan for Statistics (MAPS), to undertake urgent improvements needed for monitoring the Millennium Development Goals, by improving survey programs in participating countries.

Measuring and monitoring development outcomes require timely, reliable, comparable, relevant, and accessible, survey data. But in many developing countries, survey programs rarely provide the necessary flow of reliable, timely, comparable and accessible data. The timing of national surveys is rarely optimal, data collection programs lack methodological consistency, and existing data often remain largely unexploited.

Goal and Objectives

The ADP supports developing countries in producing statistical data relevant for policy design, monitoring and evaluation, by making better use of existing data and aligning survey programs and statistical outputs to priority data needs.

This goal will be achieved by:

• Assisting countries that do not have a coherent long-term survey program in strategizing their data collection activities;
• Building national capacity in micro-data preservation, analysis, anonymization, and dissemination;
• Working with national data producers and secondary users on the production of updated estimates of key indicators, by further exploiting existing datasets and collecting new data.

The ADP is focused on sample household surveys because they provide estimates of many key outcome indicators, as well as data needed for research and impact evaluation. The ADP takes advantage of tools and guidelines developed or provided by the International Household Survey Network (IHSN).

Geographic coverage

The ADP is currently supporting agencies in more than 50 countries in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean. A summary of the activities and results for each of the countries is provided on this site.