NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Random Digit Dialing (RDD) has become one of the most commonly used methods for selecting phone survey participants, especially after in-person restrictions were imposed due to COVID-19. Until now, there has been little available evidence on the effectiveness of different RDD strategies for ensuring high data quality and representativeness in low- and middle-income countries. In this webinar, researchers and experts from IPA will share strategies that allowed IPA to implement RDD surveys in nine countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America as part of the Research for Effective COVID-19 Responses (RECOVR) rapid phone surveys (poverty-action.org/recovr/recovr-survey). These surveys documented real-time trends of policy concern and informed decision-makers about the economic toll of the pandemic. Researchers and experts will also share lessons learned on phone survey methods and recommendations to improve these methods based on two motivating examples in Mexico City and Colombia. We encourage audience participation with questions or suggestions.

These findings come from a collaboration between IPA and the Northwestern University Global Poverty Research Lab (GPRL) on research methods. More on the Research Methods Initiative can be found on the GPRL website ((kellogg.northwestern.edu/research/global-poverty-research-lab/research/clusters/research-methods.aspx) and IPA website (poverty-action.org/researchers/working-with-ipa/research-methods-initiative).

Time: 9:00 AM EST