ABSTRACT
For designing poverty reduction strategies the approach of collecting opinions from the various groups which make up a society, notably the poor, and involving them in a participatory process, is now promoted. The objective of this new approach is to enhance the ability of poor people effectively to influence public decisions affecting their lives. This chapter subscribes to this idea of giving opportunities to the poor, allowing them to express their opinion (‘voice’) and to participate in the decisionmaking process. By analysing data about people’s views, collected from qualitative modules combined with representative household surveys, it presents and explores an original instrument, whose potential is as yet very largely underexploited in developing countries, for providing the poor with a ‘voice’ and studying poverty. It points the way to a very wide range of applications with a much more general scope. The wave of transitions to democracy throughout the world, and especially in sub-Saharan Africa, has made wider use of opinion polls as a source of information and a guide to policy orientations, alongside the traditional statistical tools used for economic analysis, both possible and necessary.
