In 2023 and 2024, Young Lives conducted its seventh (quantitative) survey round. Round 7 marked the return to face-to-face interviews after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. On this occasion, data were not collected in Vietnam.
This report provides a comprehensive overview of the fieldwork and data collection processes in Round 7. It describes the main phases of the data collection process, how the fieldwork teams were organised in each country, and provides a statistical analysis of the survey administration time. It also highlights both successes and challenges from the fieldworkers’ perspectives, emphasising transparency, accountability and Young Lives’ commitment to collecting and publicly archiving high-quality data.
Across the three countries, the Young Lives team was generally well-received, with most participants happy to see the fieldworkers again. The fieldworkers were highly experienced, with nearly half having previously participated in at least one Young Lives round. Round 7 fieldwork took on average 6.5 months, and the average survey duration of a complete Round 7 interview ranged from 2.5 to 3.8 hours across the three country samples. Interviews with the Younger Cohort tended to take about 18 minutes longer than those with the Older Cohort, as the Younger Cohort had more survey sections to complete.
Two significant challenges were encountered during fieldwork: first, an increase in participants’ migration (both domestic and international), which has been a common pattern across countries; and second, the ongoing armed conflict in Ethiopia impeded in-person visits to participants in two sites in Amhara. For these participants, a shortened version of the questionnaire was administered over the phone, which took 52 minutes on average.
This report has been written by Joanna Mihaylova with input and feedback from all the co-authors across Young Lives international team. For a full list of contributing authors, see page 4 of the report.
In 2023 and 2024, Young Lives conducted its seventh (quantitative) survey round. Round 7 marked the return to face-to-face interviews after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. On this occasion, data were not collected in Vietnam.
This report provides a comprehensive overview of the fieldwork and data collection processes in Round 7. It describes the main phases of the data collection process, how the fieldwork teams were organised in each country, and provides a statistical analysis of the survey administration time. It also highlights both successes and challenges from the fieldworkers’ perspectives, emphasising transparency, accountability and Young Lives’ commitment to collecting and publicly archiving high-quality data.
Across the three countries, the Young Lives team was generally well-received, with most participants happy to see the fieldworkers again. The fieldworkers were highly experienced, with nearly half having previously participated in at least one Young Lives round. Round 7 fieldwork took on average 6.5 months, and the average survey duration of a complete Round 7 interview ranged from 2.5 to 3.8 hours across the three country samples. Interviews with the Younger Cohort tended to take about 18 minutes longer than those with the Older Cohort, as the Younger Cohort had more survey sections to complete.
Two significant challenges were encountered during fieldwork: first, an increase in participants’ migration (both domestic and international), which has been a common pattern across countries; and second, the ongoing armed conflict in Ethiopia impeded in-person visits to participants in two sites in Amhara. For these participants, a shortened version of the questionnaire was administered over the phone, which took 52 minutes on average.
This report has been written by Joanna Mihaylova with input and feedback from all the co-authors across Young Lives international team. For a full list of contributing authors, see page 4 of the report.