Guide for Field Staff (Key R&R)

General guidelines on role and responsibility and managing field procedures

Introduction

This guide focuses on explaining the role of a surveyor, in general, and should be seen as a core layer that must exist and followed across all of JPAL SA projects. The manual also focus on the soft skills and the behavior pattern expected from the enumerators who play an extremely important role as being the first line of interaction with respondent as well as being the representative of the organization and the project they are attached to.

The role of enumerator is extremely important as they are the main engines that act as information collectors.

Each interviewer is responsible for the complete administration of data collection for the assigned household as a core responsibility, it is therefore extremely important that they understand all the procedures involved in administering surveys thoroughly on ground. This Manual will guide them how to administer a great survey.

Surveyor/Interviewer’s Role

Interviewer’s role is crucial to the overall quality of the survey. As a first step, any enumerator should keep in constant touch with their supervisor and inform her/him of any problems they encounter while working in the field.

The supervisor, on her/his part, should provide enumerators with all the necessary materials and instructions and should also collect and check their work and help them solve any problems that may arise.

A surveyor’s principal task is to conduct interviews with households  as per the quality expectations explained to them during the training program, at a rate specified by the research team during the training (or as specified by the Supervisor). One must follow strictly all instructions provided to them during the training and read all questions exactly as they appear in the questionnaire.

Checking the Completed Questionnaire:

• After finishing each interview, one must verify that all the sections have been filled out correctly and legibly. One must make sure that he/she has recorded the required information for all individuals indicated in each section. The enumerator should clearly understand what he/she is supposed to do after the survey is complete (For example: can the save it? can they upload it directly or not). 

• This must be done immediately after the interview before you hand in the questionnaires to your supervisor and, most importantly, before leaving the village. 

• You must never, under any circumstances, make any other changes in the completed questionnaire once you have recorded the questions. Please check with your supervisor about the protocols in case respondent wants to correct upon information provided, an example would be someone by mistake answering incorrectly. In any case, you should record the incident under comment or in your notebook and should check with your supervisor. 

• You should not copy the information you have collected into a new questionnaire, even if the answers are same or you know remains unchanged. Any such act where you are recording any response on your own without recording it from the respondent is a non-compliance and might be seen as act of indiscipline, even if the answer was obvious and accurate.

Relation with the Supervisor:

• Enumerator should always follow the advice given by their supervisor.The allocation of work is done by the supervisor, at a given site, allocation of lane or h/h’s is done by the supervisor, before the data collection on a given day commences on ground. 

The role of supervisor towards surveyors

• The supervisor would/should carry out following tasks to ensure that the work being done by surveyor is up to the standard of the organization. The supervisors must examine in detail all questionnaires filled out to verify that each interview has been carried out properly and in full. - Carry out checks on the answers provided to all questions (first level of quick scrutiny) 

• Conduct random checks and accompaniments to ascertain quality of surveying on ground and to assess training needs that may be useful to bring up the quality.

• Check the tracking sheet and ensure the information is complete and clear. Support survey teams by checking on them to discuss how surveyor doing in terms of meeting the expectations and/or if there are any problems or issues they are facing with respect to the instrument or any other issue that will impact quality and productivity.

• The supervisor will play a role of mentor and problem solver in the field. The Surveyor should reach out to Supervisor as a first line of defense and guidance in case of an issue or a problem.

• Preparing yourself for field:

  • Before conducting your interviews, enumerators need to prepare all the necessary equipment, paper work and supplies, know the tasks they need to perform to complete the assigned/expected work, and know the questionnaire contents thoroughly.

  • Checklist for Enumerators 

✓ Identity cards 

✓ A bag to carry documents and equipment

✓ Lunch box (The sites for data collection, may not have many places to eat and have lunch, it is therefore expected that field staff carry their lunch with them

✓ Tablet or Paper survey form 

✓ Devices being used as a part of surveying are fully charged (Check that batteries are in good working condition and do not drain out sooner than expected)

✓ Also ensure to get the battery bank/back up battery with you, if project has provided you with one. 

✓ Interview Manual. 

✓ Permission letters (if applicable) 

Approaching the allocated household and respondent:

Stage Description:

• Obtaining the respondent lists (Surveyor respondent tracking form/sheet) from Supervisors. This should include households with associated addresses, or cluster areas (and map And/or GPS device if necessary) to locate the selected households. This may be digital or paper based and differs from project to project. 

• Physically approaching the dwelling and making contact (knock on door, ring bell, ask for someone). 

• Recording on the respondent tracking sheet, if no one is home. In this case revisit is required at another time, kindly collect relevant information for revisit as per the information required on the respondent tracking sheet 

• In case, respondent is there, It is important to setup the anchor, by exchanging greeting, and explaining why he/she is at their doorstep 

• Explaining the interview process, what participation involves and the time-frame. 

• Reading the consent document clearly ensuring that the respondent is understanding the meaning, one should ensure that respondent is following through and understanding various section on concern 

• Obtaining informed consent from the household informant. 

• Start the survey and update the respondent tracking sheet accordingly.

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Making Contact

Enumerator in each and every case should make an attempt at the household and should not rely on any informal information received from a passerby or anyone else from the community. Actual contact attempts must be made, either by knocking on the door of the household, calling out, or talking to people you encounter near the household (neighbors). Simply walking by and thinking that no one is at home cannot be counted as an attempted contact. Multiple attempts to be made at the hosehold to get the surveying done, in case respondent is not available the first time. Make up to 3 additional visits to obtain an interview. Please check with your supervisor on this.  

The respondent tracking sheet should be updated with relevant information at relevant columns accordingly. If required, surveyors must provide additional useful information in the comments section. For example, if neighbor informs that the h/h members have gone out of station for 10 days is useful information to plan revisit accordingly. Similarly, someone might have temporarily migrated to field due to harvesting season and may come back after a month or so.

Explaining the survey:

• First and foremost thing an enumerator must do as soon as he/she enters the household (Once you get the invite to enter the household) is to greet every one, it is always best to use the local language and be sure how people like to greet each other in the community and do same. 

• Once greetings are exchanged, enumerator must introduce self and mention that he/she represents J-PAL South Asia at IFMR and has come to their place to conduct survey for a research projects on the relevant issue (more about the project and stakeholders, as an introduction). 

• One should automatically show your interviewer's card in all cases and should frequently remind the respondent of the purpose of the survey and of the fact that the data obtained would be kept confidential. 

• The respondent might offer enumerator the best seat available in the house, and might sit on the floor (a common practice we see in the villages), however, we should politely refuse be happy to sit on ground too, or ask for another chair for respondent. During this interaction, our goal should be to make respondent feel comfortable and respected. 

Multiple survey at same household:

• Explain to the present household members about the various modules you need to cover and the time it will take for each module

• Collaborate effectively with other surveyors (if multiple modules to be done by multiple surveyors) to ensure we do not take more time than it takes to conduct the surveys due to lack of planning and coordination.

What if the Respondent is Reluctant to Participate?

• You may encounter some people that express hesitancy or reservation, or refuse to participate. Some of these people may have been contacted before. We should first make an attempt to give them all the details they need to make an informed decision, we should request politely for some time to explain the reasons and some basic details, and then assure that the surveys are voluntary in nature, if they still decide not to continue after getting some basic details, they are free to do so. 

• Enumerator must identify self and the organization they represent (JPAL SA at IFMR) and do a detailed consenting with all the components and details provided to the respondent. 

Ensuring confidentiality

• All the data collected are strictly confidential. Any breach of the confidentiality is forbidden by law. In principle, all the questions should be asked in privacy to ensure that answers remain confidential. The presence of other people, particularly non-household members, during the interview may cause the respondent to give less accurate answers, since he/she may not want all the information shared with community members. There are some sections, which are more sensitive particularly require privacy:

  • Caste and religion 

  • Employment and income Sensitive (Socially) 

  • Sensitive questions on empowerment (For example: Do you feel afraid while travelling in night?) 

  • Health related questions 

  • Motherhood 

  • Hygiene 

When one gets to these sections one should explain to the respondents that some questions are confidential and ask him/her for a place least likely to be disturbed. Female enumerators asking sensitive questions to female respondents should ensure they are seated in a area where the women respondent feel comfortable and safe and is not getting disturbed and distracted. If another adult does not understand and refuses to leave, enumerator must politely try to:

• Ask the respondent to persuade the other person to leave. 

• Explain as politely as possible that the interview is best conducted in private. 

• Try to satisfy the person's curiosity and reiterating that survey is best conducted with one to one discussion.

Tempo of the Interview:

• Ideal/good enumerators will always maintain the tempo of the interview; in particular, this means avoid long discussions of the questions with the respondents. If one is receiving irrelevant or complicated answers, do not break in too suddenly, but listen to what the respondent is saying and then lead him/her back to the original question. Remember it is the enumerator who is running the interview and therefore he/she must be in control of the situation at all times.

Objectivity of the Interviewer:

• It is extremely important that the enumerator remains absolutely NEUTRAL about the subject of the interview. Most people are naturally polite, particularly with visitors, and they tend to give answers and adopt attitudes that they think will please the visitor. Enumerators must not express surprise, approval or disapproval about the answers given by the respondent and must not tell him/her what they think about these things themselves. 

• Enumerator must also avoid any preconceived ideas about the respondent's ability to answer certain questions or about the kind of answer he is likely to give. It is thus most important for the enumerator to read the questions exactly as they are written in the questionnaire.