Financial Diaries Research

Gojo's source of quantitative data to understand how low-income people live and manage their money

What are financial diaries?

Financial diaries is a research methodology that uses high-frequency panel data of the cashflows of its respondents.

In 2020, inspired by the work of our former Outside Director Stuart Rutherford and his Hrishipara Daily Diaries project in Bangladesh, we started exploring opportunities to set up our own financial diaries projects. Gojo's Financial Diaries is focused on low-income households to understand their cashflow management especially areas like income and expenditure, money borrowed, savings activities, and crisis management.

So far, we have commenced two financial diaries projects in Cambodia and Sri Lanka.

Camb FD 1

Cambodia

SL FD 3

Sri Lanka

Areas covered

5 provinces

9 rural and urban areas in the Northern, Western, Southern and Central Provinces

Number of respondents*

149 households**

95 households

Duration of data collection

Oct 12, 2021 to Oct 24, 2022 (54 weeks)

Nov 5, 2021 to Feb 29, 2024

Data collection methodology

Phone calls and in-person visits by enumerators 2-3 times a week

Self-recording in notebooks, which are then photographed by enumerators once a week

Number of transaction records

220,000+

280,000+

Funded by

JICA

Gojo

Research agencies involved

BN Consult

Sparkwinn Research

* This is the total number of respondents during the duration of data collection, including those who dropped out and those who were newly recruited.

** On average, we had 130 households participating in the Cambodia Diaries.

Diarists write in notebooks everyday about their lives.

We provide the respondents of our Sri Lanka Diaries - or as we call them, "diarists" -  with notebooks where they can write their daily financial inflows and outflows. Their financial lives are captured in these notebooks, which we use to try to understand the livelihoods of those who live in Gojo's countries of operation.

Click on the photos on the right for a preview of our Sri Lanka diarists. We have received their consent for their photos to be published, and their names have been changed for their privacy.


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Snapshots from the Diaries

Explore the graphs below to see the data we extracted from our Cambodia Diaries. 

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Partner with us

We are always exploring new opportunities to deepen our understanding of clients' financial lives and improve our services. If you are interested in collaborating with us and conducting a financial diaries research project, please reach out to us here.

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