M-CRIL/EDA teams undertake quantitative surveys, large and small scale, for market research, programme profiling and evaluation, baseline and endline – or cross-sectional – for impact assessment.

For sampling, we apply the standard methods and formula, to arrive at a practical number with a 90% confidence level, and 5-10% margin, and sufficient for segmented analysis and appropriate statistical tests.

We maintain a field team structure of 1 field supervisor: 4-5 field enumerators for monitoring of the field work and guiding the data collection. Field teams are usually hired for survey work from the study area, with careful training and direct oversight by M-CRIL team members. Survey protocol includes strict compliance with ethical processes for inviting respondent participation, introducing the purpose of the survey, and privacy of the data collected.

For questionnaire based surveys, we usually recommend Computer Assisted Personal Interviews (CAPI). CAPI is cost effective for real-time data entry (data gets captured at the time of the interview) and helps in maintaining quality – through internal consistency checks, and timely review by supervisors of the data entered.

Survey assignments completed include market research, baseline surveys and impact evaluations of microfinance and agriculture development programmes in India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Ghana.