Interviewer instructions
For each item listed, indicate whether someone in the household owns one of the listed items (‘yes’ or ‘no’). Make sure to ask EACH individual item and not let the respondent simple list which assets he/she thinks they have. Also, you should ask about the more luxury items, such as cars, even if you think they do not own it. You can always tell the respondent that you are asking those questions to everybody in the village, and that it is your job to do so in order to be consistent for each household.
Make sure you ask whether or not the respondent or anyone in the household owns the item. This is important as it is easy to slip into the habit of asking ‘you’ rather than ‘you or anyone else in the household’ (as it conforms more closely to natural conversational phrasing). Stick to the formulation ‘you or anyone else in the household’ to avoid confusion. Asking ‘you’ may be interpreted by the respondent as meaning ‘his/her self’ not the household.
People who belong to several households (e.g. a polygamist head of household with another wife and household somewhere else) will own assets that do not belong to the household you are interviewing. E.g. do not count this person’s furniture in the other household as belonging to the household you are interviewing, but DO count a mobile phone that he carries with him or a motorbike that he uses to visit both households. The rule should be that anything that remains in the other household is not eligible for inclusion in the asset section of the questionnaire, but anything that clearly transfers between households can be included.
Note that a ‘functioning’ need to be ‘functioning’ in order to be considered as owned asset. For instance, do not consider a car that has been standing still in the garage for several years because it does not function anymore. However, in case an asset is temporarily not functioning (for instance a cell-phone that is at the fundi at the moment), you should consider it.
Specific asset instructions:
• Radio: Emphasize that also small radio’s are considered
• Clock: Emphasize that also watches are considered
• Television: it is having the UNIT itself that is meant here, NOT whether this unit has SIGNAL or not.
