Household Interview Survey (HIS) & Activity Diary Survey (ADS) under TA 54451-001 BAN: Updating the Revised Strategic Transport Plan for Dhaka

Description of actual services provided by your staff within the assignment:   The household interview survey aims to obtain trip information of the residents in DMR area, together with household and personal attributes of selected households in the DMR area for understanding the present situation of urban transport in Dhaka. The data is also utilized for developing a transport model. The Activity Diary Survey aims to obtain more accurate trip information of the residents in DMR area. Since it is widely known that under-reporting of Non-Home-Based trips by Household Interview Survey. Activity Diary Survey will get more trip information since every activity are to be filled in and trips are not omitted by tracing the position of the person. The movement of person can be recorded more easily compared to HIS. The results of ADS will be utilised for adjustment of trip rates by trip purpose.   MSL is providing the following services:

• Survey Office Setup and Preparation: A survey office in an area which is easily accessible by the relevant personnel of the survey was setup. All the relevant key survey personnel have been recruited, a detailed survey methodology, data collection manual, data quality control plan, safety measures, training manual, survey schedules, Bangla translation of the survey questionnaire, zone-wise survey implementation plan, training plan, and piloting plan has been prepared. Souvenir for the respondent HHs has been arranged.
• Recruitment of the Field Personnel: A job advertisements on the relevant platforms was published and around 1250 application had been received for different positions. After reviewing the applications, around 600 applicants were shortlisted and called for a physical interview at the survey office. Among them, 250 applicants were called to attend various training sessions. Finally, those who passed the screening process after the training, and field test were finally selected and recruited for the final survey work.
• CAPI Platform Development: A computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) form based on the SurveyCTO has been applied to facilitate data collection procedure through the use of smartphones/ tablets. A script has been prepared to upload the survey form in the SurveyCTO platform to collect and store information from the survey. A team of properly trained Data Management Specialists/ Programmers, Data Processing Manager, and Data Management Officers has been recruited to write the scripts by following proper skip logics, upload the questionnaires into the system, upload the system to the tablets, manage the whole platform including troubleshooting, and finally process the data from the platform. A High Frequency Check (HFC) system and a Dashboard is under development to report the progress of their activities timely. Additionally, a quality-control guideline has been prepared to ensure proper quality control environment throughout the survey process.
• Zone-wise Sample Selection: The total number of samples is pre-selected as per the need of the project. Based on the latest Population & Housing Census 2022, the zone wise total population is already known and it is found that the population size per zone is not equal. Hence, to allocate the 52,000 HHs among the 276 survey zones by maintaining the representativeness, Probability-proportional-to-size (PPS) sampling method has been used. PPS sampling technique is basically recommended, if the sampling units (in this case “survey zones”) are of different sizes, so that sample from each zone are selected proportionately. A Systematic Sampling Method has been applied to select the households from each of the zones. Systematic sampling is a probability sampling method where the sample is selected at a regular interval from the population. For example, starting from 1, select a household after every 3 household from a survey area.
• Training and pretesting of the Survey: Extensive multiple days and multiple sessions of training for field managers, supervisors and enumerators have been conducted. To handle a large number of trainees, a cascade model has been applied during the training sessions. The cascade training method is a well-established method for the large-scale training programs. For this survey, a group of Field Managers and Supervisors were trained by the Traffic Survey Specialist and the Data Management Specialist of the TA Team on all the 3 types of questionnaires (i.e. Listing Questionnaire, HIS Questionnaire, and ADS Questionnaire) in a 4 days training session. These Field Managers and Supervisors are called as the Master Trainers. Then during the Enumerators training, the Master Trainers were instrumental to answer questions, and make the Enumerators understands the questionnaire in an 8 days training session.
• Obtaining required permissions for the Survey: Support letters from DTCA has been sent to all the relevant authorities. Based on the letters issued by DTCA to various officials, the survey team visited all the local authority i.e., police station, district commissioner’s office, Mayor’s office, etc. to get the final approval of the field survey.
• Survey equipment: All the necessary equipment and instruments required for the survey has been provided timely such as: Required number of survey forms (hard copy) for each of the member of the household; Data collection manual; Adequate survey devices (Tablet/ Smart Phone/ power bank etc.) for each enumerator; 4G enabled SIM card with internet connection and internet package; Gift item for each household; Storage for survey data; Adequate high-spec computers to process huge data set; Subscription of Survey CTO; ID cards for field team; Permission letters from the Police and other local authorities, etc.
• PR activities: Various PR activity plan was designed and executed: Advertisement at the Notice Board of the DTCA Website; Advertisement in the Daily Ittefaq, Daily Star, and Daily Bangladesh Protidin newspaper; Advertisement in the TV Channel (TV strolling); Miking from any suitable settlement i.e. mosques, etc.; Social-media advertisements like Facebook.
• Pilot Survey and review the results: One survey zone was piloted after the training was concluded, so that the field team can understand the actual survey and have hands on experience to conduct the survey.
• Field Plan: A detailed field plan has been prepared and distributed before the starting the field survey. However, the field plan will be updated time to time based on the actual progress of data collection.
• Field Work: At the beginning of the field work, several WhatsApp groups (as a common communication channel) have been created as follows:
  • Group with Enumerators and their Supervisors (16 groups)
  • Group with Field Managers and the Supervisors (1 group)
  • Group with Field Coordinator and Field Managers (1 group)
  • Group with the Data Management Team, Survey Coordinator and Survey Managers (1 group)
  • Group with the Data Management Team, and TA Team Experts (1 group)

All sort of updates, instructions, problems will be discussed and shared through these groups. The Field Managers will distribute the Survey Zones among the each of the Field Teams and instruct the sample size, numbers, HH IDs to the Supervisors of each of the teams. Then the Supervisors will guide and allocate HHs to their Enumerators. First the field team conducted the Listing Exercise (1st visit), then the Field Survey (2nd visit), if needed Further Visits by the Enumerator, and finally the Back-checking. Data Collection, Submission, and Data Entry: Approximately, 3-4 households are being surveying by an enumerator in a day. After surveying from different households, all the responses (information) will be uploaded to the server on the same day. Both of the tasks of data collection and submission will be done by enumerators. At every night, the Supervisors will check the data collected by the Enumerators before their submission. Survey data which are stored in the server will be checked by data processing team. If any range/logical errors are found, will be communicated with the Supervisors, and informed to the enumerators for their corrective measures. If it is found that the errors are actually happened by the mistakes of enumerators, these will be promptly revised and corrected accordingly. On the other hand, if enumerators are actually unable to understand the reason of these errors, specific data can be collected again from that particular respondent. It can be done over the phone as well. Post Survey Data Processing: The questionnaire will be uploaded by the enumerators but error checking will be done by supervisors before uploading the data and by the data management team at the back office. Estimation of travel time and cost of unused modes of transport using Google map will be done at main survey office by the data processing team. Error will be checked every day at both field and central level, which is helpful to process the data quickly and after processing, data will be eligible for further analysis. For proper confirmation, dashboard can be used, high frequency check will be done as well as other necessary steps will be taken for entire task of data processing.

• Quality Control and Error Check: Data quality control and error check will be done by:
• accompanied checks,back checks, spot checks, consistency checks, speed checks, monitoring feedback, high frequency checks (HFCs), data security policy, transparency and reproducibility, dashboard, data verification.

Safety measures: Safety measures protocol was prepared to ensure the safety of the survey team n the field.