The World Bank has launched a new initiative in the South Caucasus region, specifically in Armenia and Georgia, as part of its global "Listening to" program. This initiative aims to gather detailed data on various socio-economic issues through monthly, nationally representative surveys. The focus is on filling data gaps related to health services, migration, employment, social protection, energy consumption and disruption issues, and public perceptions on basic and digital services.
The approach involves conducting an extensive face-to-face baseline survey followed by monthly phone interviews with a subset of participants from the initial survey. "Listening to Armenia" began with a baseline survey covering more than 3,000 households using a two-stage stratified sampling design to ensure representation across urban and rural regions. Monthly phone interviews started in June 2025 with around 1,060 respondents.
This method allows for comprehensive analyses beyond typical household surveys by measuring multidimensional poverty and social exclusion indicators critical for developing countries. It also evaluates public perceptions of reforms and monitors policy effects.
"The World Bank has launched an initiative in the South Caucasus region recently in Armenia and Georgia," states the press release. The surveys aim to monitor citizen attitudes during ongoing structural reforms, assess their impact on households, and provide early warnings about potential roadblocks or unintended consequences of reform efforts.
The baseline face-to-face survey was conducted between October 2024 and January 2025. Afterward, interviewers began regularly contacting selected households via phone for short interviews scheduled monthly over a year.
In terms of sample design, the "Listening to Armenia" initiative employs a national sampling frame based on pre-census enumeration areas as the smallest geographic unit. The study uses systematic random sampling with probability proportional to size (PPS) for selecting primary sampling units (PSUs) across urban and rural areas within each administrative region or marz.
According to the findings shared in the release: "This note briefly describes the sampling method used for the baseline survey of Listening to South Caucasus (L2SC) in Armenia." The design aims at providing valid representativeness at both national and regional levels while optimizing precision for selected indicators such as per capita consumption.