Esther Smits

Esther Smits is an interdisciplinary social scientist with a focus on environmental and agricultural development. She holds an MSc in Development Economics from Wageningen University & Research and specialises in impact evaluation research. She has experience with quantitative as well as qualitative impact evaluation methods, which she likes to combine in mixed-methods designs.

Her work in quantitative impact evaluations includes randomised controlled trials (RCTs), difference in differences, field experiments and propensity score matching, while her experience with qualitative methods includes interviewing and focus group discussions.

Esther has lived in Ghana, where she worked with Innovations for Poverty Action on a large scale RCT impact assessment study. She also spent three months in Sierra Leone, conducting a mixed-methods research on agriculture and conservation. For KIT, Esther has conducted field work in Ghana, Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Mozambique, where she facilitated electronic data collection through household surveys