Surveys, Focus Groups, and Assessments

A couple of entries ago, I outlined what our work in the field Monday
– Thursday has been and how we have been involved in the Safe
Motherhood program that has been providing free antenatal health care
services to rural women in the surrounding villages of Mbarara through
the Mayanja Memorial Hospital Foundation. With the next few entries, I
want to share more details about some of the other work we have been
doing simultaneously.

Baseline Survey

One component of this Duke Engage Project is a survey that we have
designed and put together for the purpose of learning more about the
women whom we are serving and to identify some of their biggest needs.
It has been translated into the local language, Runyankole. The
information we gather from it will help us and the foundation to
improve and tailor future interventions to help more women and do so
more effectively by targeting key issues in their communities.
Additionally, good data may also help us and the foundation acquire
grants and other financial support from various organizations.

The first section of the survey contains basic questions about a
woman's demographics - age, residence, and education. There are also
many questions on her reproductive history, family life and assets,
occupation, and accessibility to water. Then there is a section on
antenatal care, which asks about the woman's prior healthcare
experiences during pregnancy, what sort of information she received
during any prior antenatal care visits, if she has ever had one, the
drugs she may have taken during pregnancy, how much she would be
willing to pay for an ultrasound scan, and the challenges she
perceives in obtaining or reaching any antenatal care. The following
section is about the delivery and health of the child she gave birth
to prior to her current pregnancy (if applicable). Next is a section
on malaria, which assesses the woman's knowledge of the disease, its
diagnosis, and precautions that can be taken to protect oneself from
getting malaria. The final section asks a woman about family planning,
her preferences on the size and timing of her family, family planning
methods, and a few questions on who makes family planning and other
healthcare decisions in the family.

Our subjects are randomly selected from the women who come to receive
services from the intervention. They are then approached by a
surveyor, who would be one of the four local university students who
speak the local language and have been told how to give the survey.


Bob and Becky, two MUST students who administer surveys, chatting with Gregory, one of the Duke Team who managed survey work for the day.

The first step is telling the woman how she was selected, what the
survey is for, and then she is asked if she is interested in
participating. If she agrees, a very detailed consent script is read,
and if she still wants to participate, the survey is administered,
after determining that she is eligible (she must be at least 12 weeks
pregnant). As recompense, when the survey is over, the woman is moved
to the front of the line to receive the services she came for, and
like every woman who comes to the intervention, she receives a
mosquito bed net at the end of the day to protect her and her fetus.

Once the surveys are administered, students not going into the field
the next day enter the responses into a large database designed using
the EpiInfo software. We are actually having them entered into two
databases so that we compare them later and check the original paper
copy in case there are discrepancies.