Researchers and policymakers need high quality data to prioritize, design and evaluate development policies and programs. So far, data is typically collected using household surveys. One challenge of surveys is recall bias, which can be substantial. Nobel laureate Agnus Deaton illustrates this in an example his book “The Great Escape”. He shows that when India changed the recall period of their household surveys on consumption from 30 to seven days, average daily expenditures rose and the number of poor Indians dropped by 175 million – seemingly with the stroke of a pen. Another study found that Tanzanian farmers overestimate their work time by the factor of 4. Improving the reliability of data is key to avoid misguided development policies and programs. To enable the collection of more accurate data, the University of Hohenheim (Germany) and the University of Media (Germany) developed an easy-to-use smartphone applications, which allows respondents to record data themselves. Recording data in real-time reduces recall bias. Using illustrations to handle data entry reduces the text-barriers for low-literate users. The team has proved that the app works collecting time-use data in rural Zambia. But the potential to use the developed method for research in low-income countries is not limited to collect time-use data and still largely untapped. More information about the project.