ter, led by Poverty, Health, and Nutrition Division Director Marie Ruel—are working on a CAPI survey measuring child malnutrition in Guatemala. To find out how well nutrition
possible without CAPI. “Infants and young children change quickly, and follow-up surveys that allow us to track their development at frequent intervals will help us better under- stand which nutrition interventions are making a difference to their health and growth,” she explains. “Conducting the frequent follow-up surveys on paper would have made including information from previous surveys difficult.” Now, says Richter, one week after a survey is done she can have information analyzed and ready to be included in the follow-up survey. Tis increases the quality of the data col- lected and cuts down on interviewer errors.
Senior Research Assistant Mike Murphy agrees. He is surveying the impact of a US Feed the Future initiative on rural incomes, agricultural productivity, and nutrition in Honduras. “With a paper survey, the interviewer would have to be on top of a lot of details,” he notes. “With CAPI, we can completely automate it.”
No Panacea Of course, problems do occur with CAPI. Murphy had to deliver extra battery packs to the field when the interviewers’ tablet batteries ran out. Richter’s software program crashed because it didn’t recognize accent marks. She lost data, and her team had to implement the first few weeks of the survey on paper before figuring out how to correct the problem.
But problems can—and do—occur with the old-fashioned paper-and-pen interviews as well. Stories abound about lost or accidentally destroyed paper surveys—whether dropped in a fire or eaten by goats—as well as sloppy data entry, unreli- able interviewers, and any number of other human errors.
© 2012 V. Agreda/IFPRI
interventions are promoting child growth and development, the project involves interviewing pregnant women and then following up when their children are 1, 4, 6, 9, 12, 18, and 24 months old.
Richter, who is leading the field management of the survey, says these frequent follow-ups would have been nearly im-
CAPI does take time, effort, and money at the outset. Sur- vey managers must choose and tailor the software program to run the survey, buy computer equipment for the survey staff, and train the interviewers. Sometimes a fix that is mi- nor on paper is time-consuming and expensive with CAPI. And if a hard drive fails, there is no paper version to turn to.
Still, the technology, equipment, and user know-how are improving quickly, making CAPI increasingly easy to use. And ultimately, timelier data that more accurately reflect realities on the ground could pave the way to better policies.
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