Survey ID Number
JAM_1993_CPS_v01_M
Title
Contraceptive Prevalence Survey 1993
Data Collection Notes
RECRUITMENT AND TRAINING
The Statistical Institute of Jamaica had responsibility for the conduct of the field work and for the coding and editing of the questionnaires and also for data entry. Accordingly, they were in charge of recruitment of field staff, editor/coders and data entry staff. Due to the sensitive nature of the questions included in the survey, a decision was taken to use only female interviewers in the female survey; in the male survey, both male and female interviewers would be used. Thus, females selected for interview would be questioned by females only; males would be interviewed by males or females.
In the case of the interviews of males in the male survey, experience has shown that female interviewers are just as or even more effective than male interviewers. Coders, editors and data entry clerks are not genderspecific although the office clerks working with the supervisors who were included in the training were all female.
Training on field work in both the pretest and the main surveys was the responsibility of STATIN while that on the technical aspects including the pretest was undertaken by a team of three local trainers headed by the Survey Director, supported by a team from CDC. All trainers were professionals who have had extensive training and experience in the field of demography, epidemiology and survey taking.
Officers from the National Family Planning Board including the Medical Director assisted in the training on contraceptive methods. In the areas of coding and editing, the training was provided by the Survey Director while CDC had direct responsibility for training in data entry, using updated SURVEY software developed by them for data entry and editing on microcomputers. Training for the field work was undertaken in two phases. The first related to the pretest of the questionnaires and to procedures to be implemented during the survey programme and was carried out during the period January 12-22, 1993. The second training for the main surveys was carried out over the period February 15 to March 1, 1993. Three training classes were held in Kingston, Black River and May Pen during the first week of the training (February 15-19, 1993) while another was held in Kingston the following week. Due the postponement of field work in some parts of the country as a result of the holding of an election at the end of March, retraining of some twenty interviewers was undertaken by the Survey Director. In all cases, the training consisted of classroom lecturers, discussions, mock interviews and written tests. Field interviews were also carried out as part of the training with the completed questionnaires reviewed in the classroom. A total of 142 field personnel were trained. Of these, there were 23 supervisors (15 males and 8 females) and 107 interviewers (29 males and 78 females). Twelve office clerks, all females, were included in the training.
FIELD WORK
The organization of the field staff for administering the CPS surveys was similar to that used for all other household surveys conducted by STATIN. The country is divided into four contiguous, non-overlapping areas, each of which is managed by a senior supervisor. Within each area, there are four zones, each covering approximately 28 Primary Sampling Units. One supervisor and five interviewers are assigned to each zone.
Field work for the pretest was scheduled to be conducted in a few pre-selected areas and was scheduled to last three days. This was executed according to schedule. In the case of the main surveys, the original schedule identified three months for both surveys. There were, however, a number of interruptions to the schedule, starting with the calling of a general election for the end of March, 1993 which resulted in a postponement of the start date in some volatile areas and a suspension in others where enumeration had commenced. Full work resumed in all areas in April but within a few days, heavy rains began in some parishes, causing a further cessation. Parishes affected were St. Thomas, Portland, St. Mary, St. Ann, Trelawny, St. James, Clarendon and St. Catherine.
The highly volatile political climate, difficulties experienced in carrying out the field visits, reluctance of a relatively high proportion of persons to cooperate, not entirely unexpected in the context of the disruption to their normal routine caused by the floods, resulted in a longer than expected period of time needed to establish contact, both with householders and selected respondents as well as higher than expected refusal rates. Accordingly, in order to achieve the target for completed number questionnaires set, field work had to be extended beyond the scheduled time. Field work officially ended on August 31, 1993.