Mobility restrictions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic sparked the need for phone-based surveys worldwide. Prior to the pandemic, many national statistics offices typically conducted in-person surveys and lacked the organizational skills and experience to conduct phone surveys. In response, Sistemas Integrales expanded the scope of its capacity-building activities and organized a workshop: Designing and Implementing Phone-based Surveys. Sponsored by the World Bank and tailored for national statistics offices, we delivered this workshop online in September 2020 to the statistics offices of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.

The workshop covered all design and implementation topics necessary to conduct a phone-based survey, either as a follow-up to a face-to-face survey or as a stand-alone phone survey. Participants reviewed all theoretical and practical aspects related to sampling and estimation for this mode, as well as the stages and details involved in the operations. They received expert step-by-step guidance on sample design, infrastructure, questionnaire design, interviewer training, fieldwork organization, logistics, data management and quality control. 

The concepts learned and the practice gained in the workshop provided participants with the capacity to design and implement a phone survey from scratch or to shift a running face-to-face survey to phone when circumstances call for it. All topics were treated in multiple practice sessions based on the specific phone surveys to be implemented by the participants.

For more details see Current training | Sistemas Integrales