The 1995/1996 Household Income, Expenditure - (PDF, 101 mb ...

1.22
material. There should be a classroom environment more conducive to paying
attention, with more formal time limits on lectures.
g. Lengthen the period of local training.
h. Teach the lectures with already completed sample questionnaires.
Survey management also asked the training participants to comment on
what problems could be anticipated in the field for the production survey.
Most of the responses turned out to be prescient. Female field enumerators
would be inappropriate for some field conditions and travel, especially in
Upper Egypt. The distance between governorate headquarters and the
respondent households would cause contact problems. At times, too much
effort would be needed to "convert" respondents to the HIECS cause, for
reasons which go beyond ignorance of statistics or wariness about the reasons
for the survey. Based on past experience, financing governorate headquarters
for survey operations would not be adequate or on time.
There were other suggestions. Given the importance of the survey,
some thought that more attention should be paid to media outreach in advance
of launch. Some resisted the notion of decentralized authority, suggesting
that CAPMAS headquarters rather than the governorate offices should be
responsible for the transport of enumerators, as well as questionnaires. 1J
Finally, a number of governorate supervisors recommended that training of
trainers should be continued locally in recognition of the specific conditions
and problems (political, geographic, or economic) faced within the
governorates.
1.D.4 Field Training of Enumerators (15-21 September, 1995)
Governorate supervisors and editors who attended central training were
tasked with disseminating the information they had gained at CAPMAS
headquarters to their teams of enumerators in the field. The survey was read
in its entirety keeping to the detail of the enumerator's manual; trainers
outlined the enumeration schedule; and enumerators ran through a number of
mock interviews.
I had the opportunity to attend parts of this training in Qena and
Aswan. I found, with very few exceptions, high levels of commitment, interest,
and problem-solving ability among the enumerators. All of the governorate
offices were visited by a CAPMAS headquarters representative during the
week of September 15-21, and the reports of their visits were similar. It was
expected that excellence in interviewing was both a matter of practice, and
trial and error. Enumeration techniques would stand to gain from a female
Egyptian anthropologist. Under oath for confidentiality and preferably
independent of CAPMAS, such a person would be well placed to observe
interviews and make recommendations for the next large-scale survey.
Moreover, a sample of site interview observations by a qualified professional
would be no more disruptive of the respondents' time than the fact of the
data collection itself, and would provide excellent opportunities to understand
the dynamics of the error generating process. It is highly recommended.
13 This was probably a relic of military management style. Not more than 30%
of governorate supervisors have backgrounds in statistics. The "Public
Mobilization" part of CAPMAS is essentially an anachronism outside of Cairo, in
any event.