Field Work Completed!

The Global Women's Institute (GWI) and the Institut de Formation du Sud (IFOS) successfully completed field work for our small sample size survey in southern Haiti. The combined team from GWI and IFOS successfully completed refresher training of 5 data collectors for 3 days on the survey, ethics around this type of research and the sampling procedures. The research team then went to the field for 10 days of data collection. They used GPS technology to apply the lots quality assurance sampling (LQAS) methodology to locate 199 households and successfully completed interviews in 94% of these selected houses.

Overall the small sample size survey field work was very successful - with the team completing the expected number of surveys in the planned timeframe. The researchers found the GPS technology used to locate the households to be somewhat challenging as many data collectors were not used to navigating via maps and the GPS technology was not always precise enough to find the exact house planned for. Paper maps - made by IFOS - were used to supplement and help the data collectors navigate the survey area.

However, preliminary results indicate that the results of this approach were very comparable to GWI and IFOS's previous multi-stage cluster survey approach - indicating that LQAS could be a reliable approach for conducting population-based surveys in humanitarian settings. As the data is further analyzed - more will be known on this in the coming months!

Top image: Data collectors and GWI staff planning for data collection