Following the census (household listing) which was carried out in May/June, the listing team in Ethiopia have completed data entry. The data entry was a lengthy process due to the number of individuals and the details captured for each household and individual, including GPS location. However, we now have a catalog of ~2,000 households and the ~5,500 inhabitants over 15 years of age, half male and half female.
All households and individuals have been assigned unique IDs, and this census catalog will be used throughout the next phase of fieldwork to match names generated through the questionnaire to build up the social network analysis.
The main fieldwork has been postponed by a week as it is seeding time in the area where the fieldwork will be conducted. During seeding time many people will be out in the fields, meaning that the enumerators would have difficulty in locating the individuals in the villages to interview.
Before fieldwork begins all the enumerators are taking part in a refresher training for a weekend. This will allow Eshetu to go over some areas of the questionnaire which have changed since the pilot study, as well as reminding the enumerators about important aspects of administering the questionnaire to keep the standards of the data collected high.
The delayed 2021 election was held this week, and the rains should not be too disruptive as the area in which the fieldwork is being done so we are optimistic that the fieldwork will be carried out as planned in the next month.