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Going digital: added value of electronic data collection in 2018 Afghanistan Health Survey

BACKGROUND: Through a nationally representative household survey in Afghanistan, we conducted an operational study in two relatively secure provinces comparing effectiveness of computer-aided personal interviewing (CAPI) with paper-and-pencil interviewing (PAPI). METHODS: In Panjshir and Parwan prov...

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Autores principales: Mergenthaler, Christina, Yadav, Rajpal Singh, Safi, Sohrab, Rood, Ente, Alba, Sandra
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8611829/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34819085
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12982-021-00106-3
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author Mergenthaler, Christina
Yadav, Rajpal Singh
Safi, Sohrab
Rood, Ente
Alba, Sandra
author_facet Mergenthaler, Christina
Yadav, Rajpal Singh
Safi, Sohrab
Rood, Ente
Alba, Sandra
author_sort Mergenthaler, Christina
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Through a nationally representative household survey in Afghanistan, we conducted an operational study in two relatively secure provinces comparing effectiveness of computer-aided personal interviewing (CAPI) with paper-and-pencil interviewing (PAPI). METHODS: In Panjshir and Parwan provinces, household survey data were collected using paper questionnaires in 15 clusters, and OpenDataKit (ODK) software on electronic tablets in 15 other clusters. Added value was evaluated from three perspectives: efficient implementation, data quality, and acceptability. Efficiency was measured through financial expenditures and time stamped data. Data quality was measured by examining completeness. Acceptability was studied through focus group discussions with survey staff. RESULTS: Survey costs were 68% more expensive in CAPI clusters compared to PAPI clusters, due primarily to the upfront one-time investment for survey programming. Enumerators spent significantly less time administering surveys in CAPI cluster households (248 min survey time) compared to PAPI (289 min), for an average savings of 41 min per household (95% CI 25–55). CAPI offered a savings of 87 days for data management over PAPI. Among 49 tracer variables (meaning responses were required from all respondents), small differences were observed between PAPI and CAPI. 2.2% of the cleaned dataset’s tracer data points were missing in CAPI surveys (1216/ 56,073 data points), compared to 3.2% in PAPI surveys (1953/ 60,675 data points). In pre-cleaned datasets, 3.9% of tracer data points were missing in CAPI surveys (2151/ 55,092 data points) compared to 3.2% in PAPI surveys (1924/ 60,113 data points). Enumerators from Panjsher and Parwan preferred CAPI over PAPI due to time savings, user-friendliness, improved data security, and less conspicuity when traveling; however approximately half of enumerators trained from all 34 provinces reported feeling unsafe due to Taliban presence. Community and household respondent skepticism could be resolved by enumerator reassurance. Enumerators shared that in the future, they prefer collecting data using CAPI when possible. CONCLUSIONS: CAPI offers clear gains in efficiency over PAPI for data collection and management time, although costs are relatively comparable even without the programming investment. However, serious field staff concerns around Taliban threats and general insecurity mean that CAPI should only be conducted in relatively secure areas.
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spelling pubmed-86118292021-11-29 Going digital: added value of electronic data collection in 2018 Afghanistan Health Survey Mergenthaler, Christina Yadav, Rajpal Singh Safi, Sohrab Rood, Ente Alba, Sandra Emerg Themes Epidemiol Research Article BACKGROUND: Through a nationally representative household survey in Afghanistan, we conducted an operational study in two relatively secure provinces comparing effectiveness of computer-aided personal interviewing (CAPI) with paper-and-pencil interviewing (PAPI). METHODS: In Panjshir and Parwan provinces, household survey data were collected using paper questionnaires in 15 clusters, and OpenDataKit (ODK) software on electronic tablets in 15 other clusters. Added value was evaluated from three perspectives: efficient implementation, data quality, and acceptability. Efficiency was measured through financial expenditures and time stamped data. Data quality was measured by examining completeness. Acceptability was studied through focus group discussions with survey staff. RESULTS: Survey costs were 68% more expensive in CAPI clusters compared to PAPI clusters, due primarily to the upfront one-time investment for survey programming. Enumerators spent significantly less time administering surveys in CAPI cluster households (248 min survey time) compared to PAPI (289 min), for an average savings of 41 min per household (95% CI 25–55). CAPI offered a savings of 87 days for data management over PAPI. Among 49 tracer variables (meaning responses were required from all respondents), small differences were observed between PAPI and CAPI. 2.2% of the cleaned dataset’s tracer data points were missing in CAPI surveys (1216/ 56,073 data points), compared to 3.2% in PAPI surveys (1953/ 60,675 data points). In pre-cleaned datasets, 3.9% of tracer data points were missing in CAPI surveys (2151/ 55,092 data points) compared to 3.2% in PAPI surveys (1924/ 60,113 data points). Enumerators from Panjsher and Parwan preferred CAPI over PAPI due to time savings, user-friendliness, improved data security, and less conspicuity when traveling; however approximately half of enumerators trained from all 34 provinces reported feeling unsafe due to Taliban presence. Community and household respondent skepticism could be resolved by enumerator reassurance. Enumerators shared that in the future, they prefer collecting data using CAPI when possible. CONCLUSIONS: CAPI offers clear gains in efficiency over PAPI for data collection and management time, although costs are relatively comparable even without the programming investment. However, serious field staff concerns around Taliban threats and general insecurity mean that CAPI should only be conducted in relatively secure areas. BioMed Central 2021-11-24 /pmc/articles/PMC8611829/ /pubmed/34819085 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12982-021-00106-3 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Mergenthaler, Christina
Yadav, Rajpal Singh
Safi, Sohrab
Rood, Ente
Alba, Sandra
Going digital: added value of electronic data collection in 2018 Afghanistan Health Survey
title Going digital: added value of electronic data collection in 2018 Afghanistan Health Survey
title_full Going digital: added value of electronic data collection in 2018 Afghanistan Health Survey
title_fullStr Going digital: added value of electronic data collection in 2018 Afghanistan Health Survey
title_full_unstemmed Going digital: added value of electronic data collection in 2018 Afghanistan Health Survey
title_short Going digital: added value of electronic data collection in 2018 Afghanistan Health Survey
title_sort going digital: added value of electronic data collection in 2018 afghanistan health survey
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8611829/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34819085
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12982-021-00106-3
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