The pilot data has been collected! This is a fantastic achievement by the team in Ethiopia.
As hoped the team were able to collect data from ~400 participants and the data is currently being entered and will be available for analysis in the next week or two.
23 staff were recruited and trained for the pilot data collection (2 listing staff, 16 enumerators (8 men and 8 women), 2 supervisors and 2 data editors). Our hope is that most of these same staff will be able to return and carry out the main study in the next month or two.
Before going out to the field the staff attended a training workshop during which they discussed the purpose of the questionnaire, went over the questionnaire in detail and were instructed on how to administer the different questions, as well as running a day of mock interviews and group discussions.
Once training was completed, the first step of the fieldwork was to list all households in the three zones identified for the pilot study, and record the relevant details of all household members aged 15 and over. This provided an entire listing of all householders to be interviewed, which could also be used to match individuals named in the social network name generator questions. Over the next few days the enumerators visited all the households to administer the questionnaires. They worked long days, travelling out by minibus to the zones early in the morning, and working in male/female pairs, they managed to administer up to 6 or 7 questionnaires each per day.
The data collection went smoothly. A few eventualities came up that we had not anticipated, which was useful to know for planning the full field study. For example, the enumerators found that many younger people were absent during the day (at school or work), and were only available at the end of the day. Several improvements for the questionnaire were also identified in some of the coding structures concerning relationships and occupations that can be amended in the final versions. The enumerators also found that the social network section of the questionnaire took a very long time to complete, so the number of name generator questions will be reduced for the final version.
All in all the pilot phase was a real success, and we look forward to seeing what the data will tell us.