Methodological approach to the impact assessment studies of rural savings banks microfinance programs.

The Rural Savings Banks (CRs in Spanish) have given evidence that it has been a successful program in terms of permanence over time, increase in the number of partners, credits and savings, which ratifies the functioning relevance of these organizations in rural areas. However, it is necessary to know and understand the changes that these organizations have generated on the communities served, in terms of their quality of life, hence the importance of strengthening the development and implementation of impact assessment studies. Although it is true that the interest to implement studies of this type is being increasingly recognized, there are still intense debates about its methodological approach, which are only a consequence of the epistemic matrix that governs the way the researcher approaches and understands reality. In this sense, the present work poses as a question: What design of research is the most appropriate to evaluate the impact of a Microfinance Program (PMF) undertaken by a rural savings bank? For this purpose, the general nature of what an impact assessment of an FMP means will be considered in the framework of the reflection, in order to describe then the designs that best suit this type of study.