3.3 Methods for technology evaluation
3.3.1 Available methods
Monitoring and evaluation of technology performance in agroforestry projects
may be approached from different angles: farmer evaluation, field
evaluation and field testing. See Table 3. Evaluation may be based on
communications with farmers, either through surveys or meetings. A survey
involves the systematic collection of information from a sample of individual
units in a given population (e.g. of farms, farmers, trees) on a
one-time or intermittent basis [M/iller and Scherr in press]. Farmer surveys
may be formal, i.e. statistically designed and evaluated, or based on interviews
or discussions with a non-statistical sample of farmers ('informal'
surveys).