The United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Rural Evidence and Learning for Water (REAL-Water) team employed a mixed methods approach in a cross-sectional observational study of rural water supply facilities in Ghana to answer the following questions:

How does the performance of individual piped water systems vary among management arrangements in rural Ghana?
What management practices and conditions account for differences in performance between management arrangements? What roles do broader contextual factors play?
What political economy factors may explain variability in rural piped water system performance between management arrangements that quantitative surveys and field observations cannot easily capture?

We measured facility performance and surveyed consumers, water facility operators, and service authorities covering 150 piped rural water facilities that represented three management arrangements:

Public utility provision via Ghana’s Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA);
Community-based management (CBM) via small town Water and Sanitation Management Teams (WSMTs), that local governments (Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies, or simply District Assemblies) support; and
Donor-supported safe water enterprises (SWEs) operated by social enterprises on market principles and supported by external aid.

We also conducted 45 in-depth key informant interviews to support a political economy analysis (PEA).

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