Get the appropriate permissions:

In order to complete the survey, you will need the permission of the people you interview, the facilities/sites you will be collecting data at and any relevant local authorities.

Facilities/sites: Once you have determined which facilities or sites you will collect data at, you will need to contact each of them. You should explain why the survey is important, exactly what will happen during data collection, how the data will be used and how it will be kept safe. You should then request permission from each of them.

Beneficiaries: The facility/site staff should explain to all potential respondents, either when they arrive at the facility/site or when they have finished at the facility/site, that they may be asked to be interviewed. When the data collection team selects someone to interview, they will ask the person for permission to interview him or her, as specified in the permission sheet. Participation in the survey is entirely voluntary, and the respondent should only be interviewed if he or she understands all the information in the permission sheet and agrees to proceed.

Local authorities: Whether you need any permissions from local authorities will vary by location.

Make a plan

A workplan will be very useful at this stage. This toolkit includes a pre-prepared workplan that includes all the steps laid out in these guidelines. Each part of the process has a suggested person in charge. The duration of each stage is roughly as follows:

  • Training the data collection team will take 1 – 2 days depending on their experience and capacity.
  • The length of time needed for data collection will depend on your sample size and the number of beneficiaries served by your program each day. At a minimum, we suggest a one week data collection period.
  • If you are using the mobile data collection tool, you won’t need to worry about data entry or analysis to produce quintile results – they’ll be there at the click of a button
  • If you use paper forms, data entry will depend on the sample size and questionnaire length, but generally a data entry clerk can enter 200-300 questionnaires per day. A further day should be planned to ‘clean’ the dataset. The toolkit comes supplied with analysis tools which will make the analysis of the wealth level of beneficiaries quick and easy.
  • The final stage is to interpret the results and disseminate findings. The amount of time needed for this stage varies.

Oversee the data collection

As with any project in the field, getting the logistics right from the start will make things much smoother. Logistical requirements will depend on your local context. You’ll need to take care of transportation, supply of questionnaires, any approvals needed from local government, stationery, to name a few.

The data quality will be much better with proper supervision. Supervisors have three main tasks:

  • Observe interviews: a supervisor should be present at 10% of each interviewer’s interviews. They will observe the interview technique used and ensure that the answers have been correctly recorded.
  • Check questionnaires: all questionnaires should be checked at the end of the day if possible. This will help identify any common errors and catch them early.
  • Support the data collection team: answer any questions and resolve any problems.