The OECS Commission and the World Bank in collaboration with the Central Statistical Office of the Ministry of Finance and Energy, are conducting a regional training workshop on computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) from Monday, 26 to Friday, 30 September 2016, at the Grenada Radisson Beach Resort. The training will also be used to introduce the Survey Solutions Software, which is used on the CAPI devices. This training targets the relevant officers working in the various national statistics offices of the OECS.
This training is the result of a need expressed at the OECS Regional Strategy for the Development of Statistics (RSDS) stakeholders’ consultation in April 2016, and also at the November 2015 and July 2016 OECS Living Standards Measurement Committee (LSMC) meetings. This support from the World Bank is a component of the OECS RSDS, and forms part of additional and continuous support from development partners in statistics, to introduce and sustain efficient statistical operations and undertakings.
The Survey Solutions is a free CAPI tool designed to administer household surveys, such as the Labour Force Survey and other surveys using the tool and the tablets. It was designed by the World Bank and is used in many countries around the world, including St Lucia and Belize in the Caribbean region. The major advantages of this software include, generally, reducing the time of data processing and improving the quality of the data through reducing number of human errors in survey data collection, entering, and processing. While the implementation of Survey Solutions has startup costs associated with training the staff to use the software and purchasing the equipment, once mastered, it can be used for multiple surveys over time, saving time and resources. In short, it significantly reduces the time between data collection and data dissemination.
Ministry of Finance & Energy
