BOX 2 PLANNING THE STAGES AND TIME REQUIREMENTS
OF A SURVEY
of different skills. You will need to decide
which tasks can be performed by your
staff, and which will require external
support. MFI staff can collect data if
appropriate training is provided. Other
tasks require skills that cannot be learnt
so easily, especially data entry and
analysis. You may therefore need to
seek help with:
• Overall design: you might need help
with developing the questions which will
best meet your survey objectives.
• Training your team of
interviewers: adequate time must be
allowed, and you should also plan for
supervising data collection.
• Training your data entry team: you
will need someone to train the staff who
are in charge of data ‘cleaning’ and entry
into a database. This will also require
adequate time and planning on-going
supervision of the data entry process.
• Data analysis and interpretation:
this requires significant expertise. Most
MFIs will need to find external support
for this work and will need to find out
who is available and whether they can
afford them.
Obtaining help with undertaking a pilot
study can also help you uncover prob-
lems in the survey instrument and inform
the data analysis process about what
data is likely to be most/least useful.
3 Seek the
appropriate form of
external support
Decide in advance which tasks will
need external support
Most MFIs do not have the full range of
skills necessary to plan, design,
implement, analyse and report an impact
survey without some external help.
Statistical analysis and interpretation
skills in particular tend to be weak or
absent.
External support can take various
forms. You may wish to engage an
academic institution in your research, or
you may prefer to hire a consultant who
will work closely with your staff and
|
Main task: |
Involves: % of total time required | |
|
Planning |
• Defining the objectives of the work • Agreeing on who will lead the work • Agreeing on the resources available - money, • Making staffing arrangements: re-organising |
10-15% |
|
Design |
• Selecting tools, adapting and pre-testing them • Training staff in their use • Preparation of detailed plan for data collection |
20-25% |
|
Data collection |
• Implementation of data collection plan |
35-45% |
|
Post-Data |
• Data cleaning and entry • Data analysis • Report writing |
35-40% |
management. You may also decide to
work alongside other MFIs. In addition
you could employ the skills of specialist
consultants or networks. Case study 1
illustrates some of the advantages to
carrying out impact surveys under an
umbrella organisation or specialised
network.
Be clear about what you want
from your consultant
Your choice of support and your manage-
ment of it will affect your experience of
the survey, how much your staff learn,
and the levels of involvement of staff
and management. It will also affect
whether you want to repeat the process
at a later stage. The key to successful
management of external support is being
clear about your objectives, and what
you want to include in the final report.
In order to get the most out of a
CASE STUDY 1 THE SUCCESSFUL INGREDIENTS OF
THE NETWORK DIMENSION
Among the Imp-Act partners
undertaking impact surveys, some of
the most successful experiences in
terms of being reliable, useful, cost-
effective, timely and replicable were
those where MFIs had undertaken
surveys either through an umbrella
organisation (such as the COVELO
network in Honduras), through hiring
the services of a specialised network
survey you need to ensure that:
• The results are timely and can be
used for policy and/or management
decisions: for example, it will be of
little use getting results a year later, as
the information will be out of date.
• The survey is useful: the questions
need to respond to the key objectives of
the programme and provide information
which will feed into policy or manage-
ment decisions.
• It is cost-effective: careful planning
will ensure you get the most out of
your survey.
• The results are reliable: a careful
survey design and effective sampling,
data collection, analysis and
interpretation are the key to reliability.
• The survey is replicable: you should
be able to repeat the exercise and
compare findings over time.
(such as FINRURAL in Bolivia), or as
part of a multi-country study (such as
for FINCA’s international study). The
reasons why networks were so
effective were due to:
• Greater clarity of objectives because
of the greater number of stakeholders
• A diverse range of technical
expertise being involved
• Good peer-to-peer learning
I M P-ACT PRACTICE NOTES • NUMBER FOUR • 2005 • PAGE THREE