Second in a three-part series. Read part 1 of the series.
We recently published a blog post about Khulisa’s experience conducting a huge health survey of 7,500 households in Zambia. Conducting an in-person survey of this scale, in the privacy of respondents’ homes – rather than at service delivery points, where the majority of our in-person surveys take place – taught us a number of valuable lessons. This week’s lesson is the importance of communication.
Conducting a huge, nationwide household survey requires cooperation from a large, diverse group of stakeholders: implementing partners; government agencies at the national, provincial, and district levels; field workers (see part 1 of this series); community leaders; and household respondents, among others. When preparing for data collection, the Khulisa team made sure to keep everyone in the loop, sending letters to the districts and provinces about what was going to happen and what kind of cooperation was needed. This communication was essential to preventing last-minute confusion, which could potentially delay completion of the household surveys.
To learn more about this household survey and our lessons learned, read the full blog post. We’ll post another household survey tip next week.
