Initially motivated by the COVID-19 pandemic, high-frequency phone surveys have been rolled out rapidly
across low- and middle-income countries with otherwise limited past experience with phone-based data
collection. In view of the slow-down in face-to-face survey data collection, phone surveys, have fulfilled
important gaps in evidence and knowledge regarding the impacts of and responses to the pandemic. Now
in the third year of the pandemic, phone surveys continue to respond to evolving data needs not only
regarding the COVID-19 pandemic but also emerging, large-scale, covariant health and economic shocks.
This presentation will provide an overview of the World Bank Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS)’s
program on longitudinal high-frequency phone surveys, which have been implemented in Burkina Faso,
Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda since April 2020 by the respective national statistical office
(NSO) in each country. Each phone survey relied on a pre-COVID-19 household survey as a sampling frame,
and except in the case of Burkina Faso, the sampling frame was the existing longitudinal face-to-face survey
that has been supported by the LSMS. The presentation will share the design- and implementation-related
experience to date; a summary of selected research based on longitudinal phone and face-to-face survey
data; and future LSMS plans regarding data collection and methodological research pertaining to phone
surveys/mixed mode data collection in longitudinal household surveys.
Initially motivated by the COVID-19 pandemic, high-frequency phone surveys have been rolled out rapidly across low- and middle-income countries with otherwise limited past experience with phone-based data collection. In view of the slow-down in face-to-face survey data collection, phone surveys, have fulfilled important gaps in evidence and knowledge regarding the impacts of and responses to the pandemic. Now in the third year of the pandemic, phone surveys continue to respond to evolving data needs not only regarding the COVID-19 pandemic but also emerging, large-scale, covariant health and economic shocks. This presentation will provide an overview of the World Bank Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS)’s program on longitudinal high-frequency phone surveys, which have been implemented in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda since April 2020 by the respective national statistical office (NSO) in each country. Each phone survey relied on a pre-COVID-19 household survey as a sampling frame, and except in the case of Burkina Faso, the sampling frame was the existing longitudinal face-to-face survey that has been supported by the LSMS. The presentation will share the design- and implementation-related experience to date; a summary of selected research based on longitudinal phone and face-to-face survey data; and future LSMS plans regarding data collection and methodological research pertaining to phone surveys/mixed mode data collection in longitudinal household surveys.