Nigeria - COVID-19 National Longitudinal Phone Survey 2020

Start	End	Cycle
2020-04-20	2020-05-11	Baseline (Round 1)
2020-06-02	2020-06-16	Round 2
2020-07-06	2020-07-20	Round 3
2020-08-09	2020-08-24	Round 4
2020-09-07	2020-09-21	Round 5
2020-10-09	2020-10-24	Round 6
2020-11-07	2020-11-23	Round 7
2020-12-05	2020-12-21	Round 8

Computer Assisted Telephone Interview [cati]
ORGANIZATION OF FIELDWORK: Data were collected by trained NBS interviewers who individually made phone calls from their respective homes. Since the country was on lockdown during the preparation and data collection exercise for the baseline round, interviewers were not allowed to be in the office. Therefore, all interviews were conducted from interviewers’ homes. Although the lockdown restrictions were partially lifted following the baseline, interviewers will continue to conduct interviews from home in subsequent rounds until it is deemed safe for them to return to the office. In addition, all other correspondence to the interviewers were made through WhatsApp, phone and emails.

PRE-LOADED INFORMATION: Basic information on every household was pre-loaded in the CATI assignments for each interviewer. The information was pre-loaded to (1) assist interviewers in calling and identifying the household and (2) ensure that each pre-loaded person is properly addressed and easily matched to the most recent interviews. Basic household information (location, household head name, phone number, etc.) was pre-loaded. The list of individuals from the previous interview and their basic characteristics were uploaded. This helped maintain the panel of individuals and ensured the status of each individual in the subsequent round of the survey.

RESPONDENTS: Each round of the Nigeria COVID-19 NLPS has ONE RESPONDENT per household. The respondent was the household head or a knowledgeable adult household member. The respondent must be a member of the household. Unlike many other household surveys, interviewers were not expected to seek out other household members to provide their own information. The respondent may still consult with other household members as needed to respond to the questions, including to provide all the necessary information on each household member.

Interviewers were instructed to make every effort to reach the same respondent in subsequent rounds of the survey, in order to maintain the consistency of the information collected. However, in cases where the previous respondent was not available, interviewers would identify another knowledgeable adult household member to interview.

DATA MONITORING AND EVALUATION: As an additional aid to ensuring good quality data, extensive monitoring was performed throughout the fieldwork for each round of the survey. Three monitoring exercises were implemented during data collection. First, Survey Solutions’ audio recording functionality was activated for 15 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 feedback from these audio audits are then filtered to the respective interviewers.

The second quality check implemented were call backs to contacted households. The call backs 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. The call back 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 call back 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 call backs were routed to the respective interviewers to improve on identified areas. Further, the call back interviewers also called households that were not successfully contacted by the main interviewer. In some cases, the call back interviewer was able to reach the household. In such cases, the case was sent back to the interviewer to conduct the interview.

The third quality check was interviews with “mystery respondents”. These were interviews conducted with the monitoring team without the interviewer’s knowledge. Interviewers were given an assignment with pre-filled details from a household not selected for the NLPS but where the prefilled contact details routed the call to a member of the monitoring team. The mystery respondents were given pre-determined answers to questions in the questionnaire such that when the interviewer calls, they should provide those responses. A short questionnaire was also prepared for the mystery respondents to fill during or immediately after the interview to share their feedback on the interviewer’s performance. The feedback from this exercise were routed to the interviewers to improve on areas highlighted by the monitoring team.

As a result of these quality checks, some of the interviewers were dropped from participating in the survey. There were also regular check-ins to address questions and issues the interviewers might have.

Name	Abbreviation	Affiliation
National Bureau of Statistics	NBS	Federal Government of Nigeria