Ghana - Ghana Living Standards Survey 3 -1991, Third round

Start	End	Cycle
1991-09-30	1992-09	N/A

Face-to-face [f2f]

GLSS 3 fieldwork commenced on 30 September 1991 in both rural and urban clusters, and finished in September 1992. In all, 11 teams were involved in the data collection and data entry exercise. Seven of these were rural teams, three were urban, and the eleventh team was a relieving team. The purpose of the eleventh team was to afford each of the ten regular teams the opportunity to take some time off as annual leave.

Rural teams were composed of three interviewers, one data entry operator, a supervisor and a driver. Two of the three interviewers in a rural team were each assigned a workload of 10 households, which they completed over a cycle of 16 days; over the 12-month survey period, each team covered 44 workloads, spread over 22 cycles. Each workload was divided into two batches of five households, with each batch being visited eight times on alternate days throughout the cycle. The third interviewer (called the supplementary interviewer) undertook price reading in markets of the locality and also stood in for the regular interviewers to allow them to take some time off during the week.

Urban teams had a similar composition to rural teams, except that there were four interviewers in the team. Again, one interviewer did the market pricing and acted as reserve interviewer. In urban teams three interviewers were each assigned a workload of 15 households, divided into three batches. One batch was visited on day 1, the second on day 2, and the third on day 3; the first batch of five households was then revisited on day 4, and so on. In urban areas the cycle was 33 days; each batch was therefore visited 11 times during the cycle. With an urban team covering three workloads in one cycle, 33 workloads could be covered in the course of the 12-month survey period, spread over 11 cycles.


In all 67 interviewers, 11 supervisors, 10 data entry operators and 11 drivers were engaged in the data collection and entry exercise. The majority of the field personnel were permanent staff of the GLSS. The experience gained in the two previous rounds of GLSS greatly helped them in coping with some of the difficult situations which arose with GLSS3 in the field.

The schedule of fieldwork was drawn up, taking into consideration distance and accessibility in the grouping of clusters. Each team was assigned to a well defined zone within the country, and was guided by a map (showing the exact location of Enumeration Areas (EAs) to be visited), and a timetable indicating the cycle and date that selected EAs were to be covered. Three teams, the Mid Forest, Upper Forest and East Forest teams, concentrated on rural settlements in the forest zone. The Savannah team covered all rural EAs in the Northern, Upper West and Upper East regions of Ghana, while the Volta Basin team covered areas lying along the east side of the Volta River. The remaining three teams covered only urban EAs. Urban Team 1 was responsible for selected urban EAs in the more northerly regions. Urban Team 2 covered urban EAs in the Western, Central and part of Greater Accra region. Urban Team 3 was assigned to areas from the east of Ghana to part of Greater Accra.

To a large extent the smooth running of the field operations depended on the roadworthiness
of the vehicles. Each team had a vehicle at its disposal, and to ensure that fieldwork was not disrupted a standby vehicle was stationed at headquarters, ready to help out when the need arose.

Even so, on a number of occasions when team vehicles broke down, the field personnel had to use the public transport system until help came from headquarters. Besides vehicle breakdown, other field problems included: respondents abandoning interviews in the middle of a cycle, as a result of a death in the family or a key household member having to travel; personnel problems (eg. resignation or ill-health of interviewers, or resulting from a decision made by superior authorities that an interviewer should be redeployed to another area); logistics (eg. problems with the provision of boots, raincoats or bedding); and diaries which respondents had failed to fill in.

Three types of questionnaires were used for GLSS3. These are:
1. Household questionnaire
2. Community questionnaire
3. Price questionnaire

The household questionnaire was in two parts.

Part A questionnaire : used to collect information on household composition,education, health and fertility, employment and time use, migration, and housing characteristics, and it was also used to identify the respondents for Part B.

Part B questionnaire : used to collect information on agricultural activities, including the consumption of home produce, household expenditure, non-farm
enterprises, other income and expenditure, and credit, assets, and savings.

Community questionnaire : used to collect information on details of infrastructure and other facilities available to rural communities . This questionnaire was
usually administered at a meeting with the community chief, along with his elders and other knowledgeable people in the community.

The price questionnaire : was used to collect information on prices in the local market.

All questions were published in english.

Name	Abbreviation	Affiliation
Ghana Statistical Service	GSS

The quality of the collected data was maintained through a variety of measures: tight supervision, with one supervisor controlling a team of three or four interviewers; observation of interviews, especially through unannounced supervisory visits.