The 5Q approach

Incorporates feedback mechanisms in agricultural development projects
to build an evidence base that improves decision-making, adoption, and impact!

Find Out More

Keep it simple! Ask 5 smart questions!

5Q explores Knowledge, Attitudes, and Skills (KAS) to understand farmers' perceptions.

Knowledge is the first step to adopt a new agricultural innovation. Attitudes towards new practices depend on a combination of the individual’s belief that it will lead to the desired outcome (outcome belief) and the values he or she attributes to those outcomes (social norm). KAS identifies people's perception of a new practice, technology, or service. Understanding cognitive barriers and drivers for adoption is essential for knowledge transfer strategies in agricultural development projects. Skill for subsumption knowledge transfer into farmer practice is the last and main desirable change, and it generally occurs because of previous changes in knowledge, skills, and attitude toward a practice or service.

The 5Q Approach

QT

Smart
Question Trees
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Simple sets of five questions that query changes in Knowledge, Attitudes, and Skills (KAS) form the basis of the 5Q approach. A logic-question-tree structure is used to keep it simple and smart.

ICT

Internet
Communication Tools
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ICT channels facilitate more cost-effective data collection. Feedback about project success and KAS of beneficiaries is crowd-sourced at a low cost.

DA

Data
Science
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Iterative, descriptive analytics from raw data and customizable reports are used to enable fast sharing of insights.

DM

Decision
Making
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The key to institutionalizing feedback systems is making the results publicly available in real-time. Therefore, quick and easy visualization of changes is used to provide findings for decision-making.

Case study 1

We asked farmers in Tanzania about their Knowledge/Attitudes and Skills (KAS) of the Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) practice “Manure Composting.”

Q1. Have you heard about manure composting?
Q2. Are you doing manure composting on your farm?
Q3. If not practicing manure composting, do you know how to do it?
Q4. If you do not know how to do it, are you interested in learning about manure composting?
Case study 2

By implementing climate-smart agriculture practices one step at a time, coffee farmers in Uganda can improve their coffee quality and productivity with the resources they have.

From CCAFS's website


Using 5Q, we asked farmers what they think about weeding their coffee plants regularly.

Case study 3

The 5Q approach incorporates feedback from users (farmers) to improve information delivery in weather & climate services in Rwanda.

We developed a question tree to follow up regularly with farmers whether or not they receive and understand climate service information.

Read more about the 5Q Approach

Less is More: The 5Q ApproachCGSpaceView
Data Collection Smart and Simple: Evaluation and Metanalysis of Call Data From Studies Applying the 5Q ApproachFrontiersView
CIAT


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Apartado Aéreo 6713, Cali, Colombia

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