Those who work in survey data collection know that survey duration is an important factor when it comes to delivering a project within budget. In this webinar hosted by SurveyCTO on 23 November 2022, Laterite’s Bisrat Getachew and Samuel Nzaramba explained how we use text audits in Python to optimize survey management and duration in SurveyCTO.
The goal is to better understand how long surveys take, down to each variable and module, in order to improve survey administration and provide accurate survey cost data for clients.
There are several reasons to focus on survey duration:
- Optimize time and cost for clients and respondents: Longer interviews lead to higher costs for clients and take more of respondents’ time
- Improve question quality: Our script flags questions that take a long time to explain. We can then focus on explaining and improving these questions during enumerator training
- Planning field work logistics: Having a clear understanding of survey duration helps teams to plan project logistics, including travel time between households and the number of surveys that can be completed per day.
To optimize and manage survey duration, our team built workflows using SurveyCTO’s text audits feature and a Python script.
View the recording below and access the resources, including our Python script on GitHub, via SurveyCTO.