How to conduct a rapid nutrition assessment - Health Systems Trust

Step 5:
Designing the tools and methods for
Information Collection
Once the required information has been identified, plans must be drawn up to collect
this information. There are a number of different methods which can be used to collect this
information, some of which are described below:
Key Informant Interviews
Information about certain aspects of nutrition can often be derived by talking to a few
key people who have insight and knowledge about that particular aspect of nutrition.
Such people whose knowledge and understanding can be used to inform planning
are termed “key informants”, and include the following three groups of people:
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People who work within the community and have a professional understanding of
the issues: for example, school teachers, clinic nurses and social workers.
People who are recognised as community leaders and seen to represent (a section
of) the community: for example, councillors, church leaders, old women in the
community
People who are important within informal networks and often play a central role in
local communications: for example, shop-owners, old women in the community,
income generation project leaders.
Observations
Some information can only be obtained by actually seeing what is happening with
your own eyes. For example, the actual way in which babies are weighed and growth
monitored. As a member of the NSA team, you may want to find out about the hygiene
conditions in which mothers prepare food for children by visiting local homes, and
observing other aspects of child health care at the same time. Generally it is a good
idea to draw up a checklist of the different things to specifically look out for.
Exit interviews with carers
Exit interviews are interviews of patients or health care users conducted just after they
have used a health service, and is usually designed to assess the quality of care provided
from the user’s perspective. For example, the provision and standard of GMP and EPI
services can be assessed by exit interview.
Record review
Ward registers, clinic registers, the actual case records of in-patients or even the patient–
held Road-to-Health cards of children can all be used in various ways to collect
information to assess various aspects of quality of care.
Routine information
The routine health information system can be used to collect a lot of useful information
that is relevant to nutrition. For example, what proportion of the child catchment
population are immunised? What proportion of babies are low birthweight?
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