Post-enumeration Survey (PES) - Statistics South Africa

Statistics South Africa
19
Recruitment and training of field staff
The recruitment strategy for the PES stated that there would be over-recruitment by 20% in each
province in order to increase the pool of candidates to choose from at the completion of training. This
was not always possible to achieve since the field staff database was exhausted in most provinces by
the time PES started recruiting. In some instances, people were headhunted from the areas in which the
PES was conducted, but this was not always successful. Some trainees also dropped out of training,
which also reduced the number of candidates to choose from. Human Resource Management (HRM)
processes also had a negative impact on progress in instances whereby field staff had to be replaced.
Numerous follow-ups had to be made regarding the signing of documents for the appointment of staff.
The secondment of permanent staff also proved to be a challenge in instances where some of them
refused to work over weekends (which was a requirement for census and PES fieldwork due to
timeframes), or they undermined the authority of contract staff who were in higher positions. This had a
negative impact on staff morale because it meant that one person had to do the work of two people over
the weekends.
Publicity and listing
Publicity and listing was initially planned for 07 to 22 November 2011, but due to the large presence of
census field staff in the field and a decision by senior management, the start date for publicity and listing
was moved to 14 November 2011. This meant that the period for this exercise was shortened to at least
a week, leaving very little time for the team to conduct comprehensive quality assurance on listings. This
resulted in the team having to do numerous updates on the EA Summary Books during enumeration for
the structures that had been missed during listing. Despite the postponement of PES publicity and listing,
census field staff was still present in some EAs that were in the PES sample, which compromised the
independence of the PES.
Pamphlets and posters were only available in English, which meant that Fieldworkers had to spend a lot
of time explaining the messages in these posters and pamphlets in the language of the respondent. The
quality of the posters was also poor (posters were easily ruined by wind and rain, and had a small font
size). The fact that the census had not communicated to the public about the PES (despite the fact that
the PES had requested census to include messages on PES in census publicity material) also meant
that Fieldworkers had to spend a lot of time explaining the purpose of their visit to respondents, which
resulted in refusals in some cases.
Post Enumeration Survey (PES)