Publication: The Power of Survey Design : A User's Guide for Managing Surveys, Interpreting Results, and Influencing Respondents
Loading...
Other Files
15,511 downloads
Published
2006
ISSN
Date
2012-06-04
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
The vast majority of data used for economic research, analysis, and policy design comes from surveys-surveys of households, firms, schools, hospitals, and market participants, and, the accuracy of the estimate will depend on how well the survey is done. This innovative book is both a 'how-to' go about carrying out high-quality surveys, especially in the challenging environment of developing countries, and a 'user's guide' for anyone who uses statistical data. Reading this book will provide data users with a wealth of insight into what kinds of problems, or biases to look for in different data sources, based on the underlying survey approaches that were used to generate the data. In that sense the book is an invaluable 'skeptics guide to data'. Yet, the broad storyline of the book is something that should be absorbed by statistical data users. The book will teach and show how difficult it often is to obtain reliable estimates of important social and economic facts, and, therefore encourages you to approach all estimates with sensible caution.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Iarossi, Giuseppe. 2006. The Power of Survey Design : A User's Guide for Managing Surveys, Interpreting Results, and Influencing Respondents. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/6975 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Does Respondent Reticence Affect the Results of Corruption Surveys? Evidence from the World Bank Enterprise Survey for Nigeria(2010-09-01)A potential concern with survey-based data on corruption is that respondents may not be fully candid in their responses to sensitive questions. If reticent respondents are less likely to admit to involvement in corrupt acts, and if the proportion of reticent respondents varies across groups of interest, comparisons of reported corruption across those groups can be misleading. This paper implements a variant on random response techniques that allows for identification of reticent respondents in the World Bank s Enterprise Survey for Nigeria fielded in 2008 and 2009. The authors find that 13.1 percent of respondents are highly likely to be reticent, and that these reticent respondents admit to sensitive acts at a significantly lower rate than possibly candid respondents when survey questions are worded in a way that implies personal wrongdoing on the part of the respondent.Publication Governance and Anti-corrupton Diagnostics : Guidance and Tools for Implementation, Monitoring, and Assessment in the Field(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-09)This guide focuses on one of the more granular approaches to governance improvement, the governance and anti-corruption diagnostic. Governance and anti-corruption diagnostics are used as an initial strategy to identify the nature of governance problems, to target the key sources or institutions associated with these problems, and to establish a baseline and indicators which can be used to make reforms and to measure progress over time. Increasingly, these diagnostics are becoming sectoral in nature, meaning they are customized to assess governance and anti-corruption in a targeted sector. If conducted properly, the diagnostic process informs and catalyzes stakeholders to demand reform. If repeated periodically, these diagnostics can become useful tools to monitor governance and anti-corruption over time. More specifically, governance and anti-corruption diagnostics: 1) Unbundle corruption by type - administrative, capture of the state, bidding, theft of goods and public resources, purchase of licenses and regulations; 2) Identify both weak institutions (which are in need of reform) and strong institutions (which provide examples of good governance); 3) Assess the cost of each type of corruption on different groups of stakeholders; 4) Provide insight into the relationship between corruption, service quality and access, and trust in public institutions; 5) Identify key determinants of good governance; and 6) Serve as a strong foundation for policy recommendations and reform.Publication Measuring Financial Capability : Questionnaires and Implementation Guidance for Low-, and Middle-Income Countries(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-06)This manual is designed to provide guidance to institutions, researchers, and survey firms on how to measure financial capability in middle, and low income countries using a new survey instrument that was developed and tested, from start to finish, in middle- and low-income countries. This new survey was developed as part of a larger project financed by the Russia Financial Literacy and Education Trust Fund (RTF) and implemented by the World Bank that encompassed both measurement of financial capability and evaluation of financial literacy programs. The development of the new RTF Financial Capability Survey (FCS) was done in collaboration with a team of external experts and teams from a total of 12 low- and middle-income countries. The full description of how the survey was developed can be found in Kempson, Perotti, and Scott (2013) along with findings from the first wave of surveys that have been done. In this manual we briefly summarize reasons why the FCS might be of interest to a country, provide a detailed outline of the issues related to implementing the survey successfully, and demonstrate how to analyze the resulting data. The first chapter of the manual lays out the reasons why this survey could be of use to policy makers. Chapter two describes the FCS questionnaires and their goals and objectives. Topics related to fieldwork, or the implementation of the survey, are covered in chapter three. Guidance on how to analyze the survey is provided in chapter four. The survey instruments can be found in the appendixes of this manual, and related documents, interviewer and supervisor manuals, can be found on the Trust Fund website www.finlitedu.org.Publication Challenges and Opportunities of Mobile Phone-Based Data Collection : Evidence from South Sudan(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-01)The proliferation of mobile phones in developing countries has generated a wave of interest in collecting high-frequency socioeconomic surveys using this technology. This paper considers lessons from one such survey effort in a difficult environment -- the South Sudan Experimental Phone Survey, which gathered data on living conditions, access to services, and citizen attitudes via monthly interviews by phones provided to respondents. Non-response, particularly in later rounds of the survey, was a substantial problem, largely due to erratic functioning of the mobile network. However, selection due to non-response does not appear to have markedly affected survey results. Response rates were much higher for respondents who owned their own phones. Both compensation provided to respondents in the form of airtime and the type of phone (solar-charged or traditional) were varied experimentally. The type of phone was uncorrelated with response rates and, contrary to expectation, attrition was slightly higher for those receiving the higher level of compensation. The South Sudan Experimental Phone Survey experience suggests that mobile phones can be a viable means of data collection for some purposes, that calling people on their own phones is preferred to handing out phones, and that careful attention should be given to the potential for selective non-response.Publication Do Labor Statistics Depend on How and to Whom the Questions Are Asked? Results from a Survey Experiment in Tanzania(2010-01-01)Labor market statistics are critical for assessing and understanding economic development. In practice, widespread variation exists in how labor statistics are measured in household surveys in low-income countries. Little is known whether these differences have an effect on the labor statistics they produce. This paper analyzes these effects by implementing a survey experiment in Tanzania that varied two key dimensions: the level of detail of the questions and the type of respondent. Significant differences are observed across survey designs with respect to different labor statistics. Labor force participation rates, for example, vary by as much as 10 percentage points across the four survey assignments. Using a short labor module without screening questions on employment generates lower female labor force participation and lower rates of wage employment for both men and women. Response by proxy rather than self-report yields lower male labor force participation, lower female working hours, and lower employment in agriculture for men. The differences between proxy and self reporting seem to come from information imperfections within the household, especially with the distance in age between respondent and subject playing an important role, while gender and educational differences seem less important.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
No results found.