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Home » Topics » Biomarkers » Identifying Interviewers who collected biomarker for women/men/children (How to construct variable to identify which investigator collected biomarker response for respondent)
Re: Identifying Interviewers who collected biomarker for women/men/children [message #19709 is a reply to message #19703] Tue, 04 August 2020 18:05 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
Bridgette-DHS is currently offline  Bridgette-DHS
Messages: 3016
Registered: February 2013
Senior Member

Following is a response from DHS Research & Data Analysis Director, Tom Pullum:

I recommend that you use the ID codes as they exist in the data. You really have no alternative.

For this survey you have evidence that there was some inconsistent use of interviewer ID codes, but I believe that in most surveys there are similar issues even if they are completely hidden. The ID codes for interviewers almost always follow a pattern, which I described in a 2018 Methodological Report (https://www.dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/MR24/MR24.pdf). The final digit in the ID code usually describes the position of the person on the team. The final digit is "0" for the supervisor. Certain digits are reserved for the measurers. A digit may be reserved for a person (male) who conducts interviews of men.

Suppose that during fieldwork an interviewer, for whatever reason, must leave the team. That person will be replaced and the new person will take over the same ID code. Other substitutions can happen and lead to the same ID code being used by more than one interviewer.

Although these things happen, they are relatively rare. With the NFHS4, the two numbers (875 and 789) are within about 10% of each other. I would take the data at face value, but would add a footnote or comment that the there is evidence of some inconsistent use of ID codes.



 
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