Case Study - Philippines Metagora Pilot Project

CHAPTER 7: EVALUATION OF DATA-COLLECTION PROCESS

7.1 PROBLEMS AND ISSUES

7.1.1. Questionnaire

• Initially, the prioritisation of coverage, concerns and issues took some time before it was finalised, resulting in several revisions of the questionnaire. The NSCB had to accommodate partner agencies’ concerns and issues.

• The IGE, composed of various members representing different sectors, also presented various concerns that had to be addressed.

• Two pre-tests were conducted that helped in the revision of the questionnaire.

• The translations were found to be inaccurate, especially the Ilocano (Bago Tribe) translation, despite the fact that professional Ilocano speakers and writers were not as scarce as Kankanaey or Bugkalot speakers/writers.

• There was limited time to review the back-translation.

• The 2000 Census of Population and Housing listing of households was not a reliable sampling frame. Aside from not being current, the identity of the household heads’ tribe is based on ethnicity, and not on the individual’s self-ascription. Some 43.7% of the respondents either came from the replacement list or from sources other than original list of selected sample households.

During data encoding, some observations and problems were encountered that needed to be verified, including:

1. More than two answers coded on questions that required only one answer;

2. Replacement households that were not from the replacement list;

3. Ages of household members that were not consistent;

4. Unfilled response boxes;

5. Erroneous codes; and

6. Responses that were obviously changed by the enumerator supervisor.

7.2.1 Questionnaire development

Prior to the development of the questionnaire:

• The survey objectives and hypotheses must be confirmed; and

• The development of a statistical framework, which includes a list of indicators and statistical analysis to be done, should logically follow the development of the conceptual framework.

• More professional translators should be used; and

• More thorough review of the consistency of the back-translated questionnaires against the original English questionnaire should be conducted.

• In future undertakings, a listing from a more recent population census should be used. However, the population census should use self-ascription for identifying the IPs’ tribe. If this is not available, a listing of households in each ancestral domain should be the basis for the sampling frame.

• More thorough field data-validation procedures should be applied before the questionnaires are shipped for data entry.

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