Behavioral Sensing: Integrating Sensors into Social & Behavioral Research

In developing countries, quantitative social science research relies heavily on infrequent surveys that capture the self-reported behavior of individuals and their families. These data can be biased and unreliable and are extremely costly to collect. Repeated surveying also has been shown to influence households' behavior and reporting, which limits the utility of high-frequency data.   The Behavioral Sensing workgroup is charged with designing a more reliable data collection platform for development economics. The platform will combine rugged, wireless sensor networks for long term, non-intrusive monitoring of behavior (i.e. cookstove usage) with mobile-phone based tools for collecting and transmitting data. It will enable public health, behavioral, and social scientists to collect data that study participants would ordinarily share through self-reports, but with greater accuracy, reliability and frequency than is currently feasible.

Professors: Edward Miguel, Eric Brewer, and Tapan Parikh

Spring 2013 Events: 

Friday, April 12th, 12-1:00 p.m.
Blum Hall, B100 Plaza Level
"Black Powder, Red Soil, More Crops: Biochar,  technology adoption, and carbon sequestration in Western Kenya" 
Andrew Crane-Droesch (PhD candidate, Energy and Resources Group)
 
Wednesday, April 17th, 12-1:00 p.m.
Blum Hall, B100 Plaza Level
"Technology Adoption in Difficult Environments: Evidence from mobile payments in Afghanistan"
Tarek Ghani (Business and Public Policy)
 
Monday, April 22nd, 12-1:00 p.m.
210 South Hall
ICTD Seminar & Lunch
"Building and managing low cost, low power wireless networks in developing regions"
Bhaskaran Raman, Ph. D (Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Bombay)
Please RSVP for lunch: http://tinyurl.com/apr22ictd
 
Thursday, May 9th, 12-1:00 p.m.
Blum Hall, B100 Plaza Level
"Addressing the Water Energy Nexus in Rural Mountains: A remote sensing feasibility assessment of in-line hydropower"
Marc Muller (Civil & Environmental Engineering)
 
Monday, May 13th, 2-3:00 p.m.
Blum Hall, B100 Plaza Level
"Low-cost automated chlorine dosers in urban Dhaka, Bangladesh:  balancing tech development, rigorous evaluation, and financial sustainability "
Amy Pickering and Yoshika Crider (Civil & Environmental Engineering)