USAID Project for Developing Poverty Measurement Tools - Fieldwork Technical Report

This is a technical report of a USAID project conducted by the SANGE research center. It describes the process of a survey implementation for developing a poverty measurement tool and the problems that occurred.

The report states that:

• Four inter-related survey tools were used to test the precision in measuring the level of poverty in Kazakhstan;
• Data was collected from 842 households in 40 clusters in 7 regions;
• Face to face interviews with adult household members were used for data collection.

The report lists the steps involved in the fieldwork:

• Training and team organization;
• Coding of regions, surveys and supervisors;
• Sampling;
• Quality control of fieldwork and data entering.

The report mentions some of the barriers faced:

• Some interviewees declined to answer, while others refused to participate;
• Data cleaning process took much time because of underestimation of the volume of work;
• Problems encountered in some surveys:
  • Community survey required changes in some sections since they had to be explained,
  • Price survey was extremely hard for supervisors,
  • Benchmark survey was lengthy and was dull for interviewers and respondents.

The report concludes by:

• Highlighting that the work of developing a poverty assessment tool was done in 5 months for 7 regions of Kazakhstan;
• Recommending that the period of researches must be planned in advance.