Methodological Innovations for Measuring Informality – A Survey Experiment on Labor Measurement 2022

As an additional aid to ensuring good quality data, extensive monitoring was performed throughout the fieldwork for each round of the survey. Two monitoring exercises were implemented during data collection. First, Survey Solutions’ audio recording functionality was activated for 25 percent of the sample. These interview recordings were audited by 3 trained monitors, though not all recorded interviewers were able to be reviewed due to personnel constraints. On a daily basis, the monitors will listen to these recordings and fill in a structured questionnaire with their observations on interviewer performance. The feedbacks from these audio audits are then filtered to the respective interviewers.

The second quality check implemented were multiple visits to contacted households. Multiple visits were conducted by trained interviewers who are not part of the main data collection interviewers. Each day, up to 36 households that were contacted by the interviewing team are called by these call back interviewers. These interviewers conduct a short interview with the household to confirm that the interviewer did indeed conduct the interview, that certain key elements were clearly stated to the respondent, that the interviewer conducted themselves in a professional manner, and other details on the interview process. Further, the team asked several time-invariant questions of the respondent to further confirm the interview was fully conducted and the interviewer captured the information correctly. Feedback from this quality checks were routed to the respective interviewers to improve on identified areas. Further, the interviewers also visited households that were not successfully contacted by the main interviewer. In some cases, the interviewer was able to reach the household. In such cases, the case was sent back to the interviewer to conduct the interview.