Surveys: Design Tools For Future Surveys

A very common event in an agricultural research or development programme is the carrying out of a survey. There are a number of textbooks available to help those who may be unfamiliar with some of the techniques needed to design, implement and analyse a survey. In addition to these textbooks, many institutes and funding sources can provide guideline manuals on survey operation. These books and manuals are often silent on what should be a major objective of any survey and in particular repeated surveys and monitoring studies. The survey knowledge and results should be used as inputs for future surveys of the same type. So the survey users must not only consider the quality of the estimates output for the survey but also the quality of the inputs to decisions made with respect to future scientific work. Two examples of this are discussed. One of them is a survey to estimate demand for fresh agricultural produce, the other example is use of a Farmer's Field School to demonstrate the benefits of IPM. The dual nature of survey analysis (estimation of results and design tool for future work) is a major philosophy of the Farmer's Field School approach, and also clearly applies to activities such as on-farm monitoring and consumer consumption studies. But most, if not all surveys should bear in mind the dual use of the outputs, and this will save time and effort in designing future surveys.