For this research proposal, the study specifically revolves around Ecuador, as the country and many others located in Latin America were subject to social spending cuts. To help improve these cuts, the country went through a total economic reform. Every sector made improvements after the reform except for the educational system. However, due to the failure to improve the educational system, Ecuador as a country lost their ability to expand  economic growth and lost the ability to compete with other people for skilled jobs. This proposal wants to find the detriments of economic performance in Ecuador, along with looking at the importance of education for economic development. Along with this, the researchers hypothesize that Ecuador would need both access and quality in education in order to improve social well being and economic growth.

Before talking about the data, the study talks about some possible issues that could occur. The first problem that could occur is that there is bias due to limited variables. For example, this study did not take parental influence as a factor for the results. The other problems that were mentioned were bias due to inconsistent measurements, a lack of specification of the dependent variable, and the sample selection that could be used did not include children who have never been to school or those who repeat a grade. These issues could have a significant impact on the results due to the fact that the entire country of Ecuador is not equally represented.

There are two different types of data methods that could be used for this study. The first type of collection is through two different surveys. One survey would look at the living standards of those that go to school. They would get the questions though data from the ministry of education. The other survey looks at performance on standardized tests and tries to find out about education production. In terms of the other data collection method, the study would look at statistics about the unemployment rate to look for labor productivity. All of these method would help the researchers see if their hypothesis would be right.

https://www.iss.nl/fileadmin/ASSETS/iss/Student_profiles/PhD/PhD_foto_s_pdf_s/Education_Policies_in_Ecuador.pdf