Electronic data collection for a modular household survey in

Ethiopia

Keith TomlinIDEAS Data Manager/Epidemiologist

Improving health worldwidewww.lshtm.ac.uk

The Project

• IDEAS (Informed DEcisions for ActionS)

• Aims to improve the health and survival of mothers and newborns by generating evidence to inform policy and practice.

• Working in Ethiopia, North-Eastern Nigeria and the Indian States of Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

The Survey• Ethiopia follow-up survey• Aim to gather data on pregnancies, deliveries and newborn care

from women in households, from frontline workers and from health facilities

• Household survey comprised in-depth interviews with women of child-bearing age

• 80 randomly sampled clusters• 75 households per clusters (6,000 in total)• 12 survey teams, each with 6 interviewers and one supervisor• Fieldwork carried out during April 2015

EthiopiaSurvey cluster locations

Household survey structureClusters (80) Cluster Name

01 DEGA AMBA02 BARIKA ADIS SEBHA03 BARIKA ADIS SEBHA04 MADO TEMKET05 GEREWERE06 BEYA07 LORI08 SATA MIDIRARO09 ERGOYE

etc…

Clusters (80) Cluster Name

04 MADO TEMKET

Households (75)

04/0104/0204/0304/0404/0504/0604/0704/08etc…

Household survey structure

75 households within each cluster

Household survey structureClusters (80) Cluster Name

04 MADO TEMKET

Households (75)

04/08

Residents (household roster)

ID number Name Gender Date of Birth Eligible

04/08/01 Teklay Male 08/05/1970 No

04/08/02 Azmera Female 08/12/1982 Yes

04/08/03 Birhdan Female 24/02/1987 Yes

04/08/04 Semere Male 15/10/1990 No

04/08/05 Meaza Female 30/08/1993 Yes

04/08/06 Mebrhit Female 05/06/2002 No

A roster is taken of all residents in each household

Household survey structureClusters (80) Cluster Name

04 MADO TEMKET

Households (75)

04/08

Residents (household roster)

ID number Name Gender Date of Birth Eligible

04/08/01 Teklay Male 08/05/1970 No

04/08/02 Azmera Female 08/12/1982 Yes

04/08/03 Birhdan Female 24/02/1987 Yes

04/08/04 Semere Male 15/10/1990 No

04/08/05 Meaza Female 30/08/1993 Yes

04/08/06 Mebrhit Female 05/06/2002 No

The programme identifies women of child-bearing age (15-49)

Household survey structureClusters (80) Cluster Name

04 MADO TEMKET

Households (75)

04/08

Women aged 15 - 49

ID number Name Gender Date of Birth Eligible

04/08/02 Azmera Female 08/12/1982 Yes

04/08/03 Birhdan Female 24/02/1987 Yes

04/08/05 Meaza Female 30/8/1993 Yes

• Request to interview each woman if present• Return to the household up to three times if a

woman was temporarily absent

Household survey structureWomen aged 15 - 49

ID number Name Gender Date of Birth Eligible

04/08/03 Birhdan Female 24/02/1987 Yes

Pregnancy roster

Baby ID Name Gender Date of Birth

04/08/03/01 Azmera Female 12/09/2007

04/08/03/02 Semere Male 03/07/2009

04/08/03/03 Mebrhit Female 12/09/2013

A roster of births for each woman was taken

Household survey structureWomen aged 15 - 49

ID number Name Gender Date of Birth Eligible

04/08/03 Birhdan Female 24/02/1987 Yes

Pregnancy roster

Baby ID Name Gender Date of Birth

04/08/03/01 Azmera Female 12/09/2007

04/08/03/02 Semere Male 03/07/2009

04/08/03/03 Mebrhit Female 12/09/2013

If the most recent birthhad taken place in the two years prior to the interview, additionalquestions were asked

Language considerations

English Pleased to meet you Amharic ስለተዋወቅን ደስ ብሎኛል

Oromo si argun naaf gammachudhaTriginya ጽቡቕ ሌላ

Software considerations

• Affordable (and preferably free)– and runs on affordable hardware

• Accommodate modular structure, and automatically generate & carry forward ID numbers between clusters, households, adults and pregnancies, with no manual entering of numbers

• Accepts Unicode to allow for Amharic and Tigrinya languages• No dependence on the internet, because there mostly isn’t any

Software comparison(as at June 2014)

Provider No cost to develop/deploy

Runs onAndroid OS

Accommodates modular structure

Recognises Unicode

CSProAndroid

EpiCollect

ODK

Pendragon Forms

Surveybe

Hardware considerations• Run Android• Inexpensive (84 units + cases + extra batteries + import duties)• Readily available in bulk• Robust• Excellent battery life• Small enough to be held in one hand, but with a large enough

screen so that long option lists could be displayed without scrolling

And the winner is…

In-field data reporting

In each survey team, data weretransferred at the end of each day from the tablets to thesupervisor’s laptop, using USB Cables.

In-field data reporting

Data were automatically imported into a Microsoft Access database to create a daily monitoring and query report

Data encryption

• Built-in Android encryption on tablets

• TrueCrypt encryption on laptops

The biggest lesson was…

…ስለተዋወቅን ..Some non-Latin characters (such as those used in Amharic) can take up more computer memory than Latin characters. This has the potential to slow down data collection programmes. Many thanks to the CSPro developers for rapidly responding to this problem and releasing a new version of the Android software in time for our survey.