We have now published on our website the three methodology reports for the phone surveys we commissioned and coordinated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (2021), in Ghana (2022), and in Haiti (2023).
These reports provide a comprehensive overview of each country's survey design and project, covering questionnaire topics, data collection methods, statistical populations, sampling, geographic coverage, response rates, interviewer training, pilot interviews, data cleaning, survey weights, accuracy measures, and recommended citations for datasets and methodology.
Phone surveys are one of the data collection tools we use to inform our methods of production of mobility estimates from CDR data (Call Detail Records) and learn about the socio-demographic structure of phone users in the countries of interest. Ultimately, they support how we interpret and analyse CDR-derived mobility indicators in each country's context.
The data collected through the phone surveys are used to understand how demographics and mobility vary between subscribers from an operator to another; between subscribers of different regions; and between those who use their phones more or less often. With this information, we can then assess how representative the phone users represented in the pseudonymised CDR data we process and analyse are of the phone-using population of the country.
Some photos of our phone survey data collection in Haiti, 2023
