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This chapter explores how women negotiate their relation with those they support in light of assumptions about space and distance in development. The first section discusses how stories and field trips feature in strategies to remain connected. The chapter subsequently argues that partner organizations are key to bridging the geographical and “imaginary” distance between women in the North and beneficiaries in the South and suggests that these serve not only as “bridge” but also as “replacement.” It connects this analysis of the function of partnerships with a structural critique offered by postcolonial and critical development literature. Finally, this chapter engages with the contentions around the representative role of global civil society, including but not limited to concerns about distance. The interviews demonstrate that both representation and alternative models, such as facilitation of self-representation, cannot resolve certain contentions and that construction should be acknowledged as an inevitable dimension of representation.

This chapter looks at the challenges that arise from working with partner organizations. Evaluations provide evidence about effectiveness and impact, and offer operational insights that can spur improvements to products and processes. From a researcher's perspective, partnerships with practitioners offer access to the people who live and breathe the issues in question. However, along with the mutual benefits of partnerships come unique challenges, one of which is limited staff flexibility and bandwidth. Partner organization staff typically have tremendous expertise, but often experimental protocols require making changes to familiar tasks. This raises the question of staff capacity and appetite to learn new skills and routines. As such, researchers should seek out partners who genuinely want to learn about their programs and products; who are ready, willing, and able to dedicate an appropriate amount of organizational capacity to research; and who are open to the possibility that not all the answers will be positive.

This concluding chapter offers some guide on how to run a field study. First, researchers should think about where, when, and with whom they will run their experiment, and make sure these parameters fit the underlying idea or theory they intend to test. Second, every question in a survey should have a purpose. Researchers should be mindful that subtle features of a survey like response scales and order of questions can influence the results. Third, researchers should make sure that their implementing partner understands what it will take to conduct a research. Fourth, researchers should make an intentional decision about how, and how much, to incorporate technology into their survey. Fifth, researchers should not assume people will sign up to receive a program or service. They should find out directly whenever possible by piloting or otherwise gauging demand for their intervention.

This chapter focuses on low participation rates. Low participation rates squeeze the effective sample size for a test, making it more difficult, statistically, to identify a positive treatment effect. There are two moments in which low participation rates can materialize: during the intake process to a study or intervention, or after random assignment to treatment or control. Low participation during the intake process often occurs when marketing a program to the general public. Researchers working in the field with partner organizations often face inflexible constraints in trying to cope with low participation during intake. The second type of low participation—that which occurs after subjects have been randomly assigned to treatment or control—is a more daunting problem and is less likely solvable than low participation at the intake phase.

This chapter examines a study conducted with the Peruvian microfinance institution Arariwa, which explores a number of questions regarding technology's potential and proper role as a development tool by implementing and testing a multimedia financial education program for clients. In this case, there are two major areas of failures: research setting and partner organization challenges. There were a few distinct instances of the former. First, the field sites presented challenges to the use of technology. Second, the intervention itself was deceptively complex. Finally, there was an element of bad timing in the flooding that caused repayment problems for some clients, thus adding stress to loan officers' already full plates. Indeed, competing priorities were a key partner organization challenge in this case. Loan officers were expected to deliver trainings without any lapses in, or relief from, their basic duties.

This chapter assesses a study conducted with SKS Microfinance and insurer ICICI-Lombard where the researchers added a mandatory health insurance policy to SKS microloans to test the theory that bundling policies with other products creates a viable pool of clients for insurers. SKS's bundling of insurance with microloans proved so problematic that, at the end of the day, there were not enough insured clients for researchers to study the impact of getting insurance on health experience or financial performance. The obvious failure here is low participation after randomization. The deeper question is why low participation became an issue. This points to two contributing failures. First, there was a partner organization burden around learning new skills. The second contributing failure can be traced all the way back to the project's inception. Before the study began, SKS had never bundled insurance with its loans. In terms of research setting, they were dealing with an immature product.