USAID, one of the world’s premier international development agency and a catalytic actor driving development results, has partnered with the African School of Economics (ASE) for a project on the opinion of citizens in the field of health. This project is managed and conducted through ASE’s Institute for Empirical Research on Political Economy, including the full training of surveyors conducted by IERPE.

This study aims to collect basic data on the opinion of citizens regarding the healthcare sector. Specifically, the purpose of the survey is to assess the trust of citizens in healthcare providers and also collect their perception of corruption in the health sector. Personal interviews will be used to obtain information from each respondent selected in a household.

During the personal interview, the interviewer visits a randomly selected household and administers the questionnaire to an individual aged 18 and over randomly selected from the household according to a gender equity criterion (in an enumeration area, 4 men and 4 women were surveyed) and had some experience of at least 24 hours in a public or private health center. The interviewer asks a series of questions to the respondent and the interview takes place face to face in the language of choice of the respondent. The interviewer records the answers given by the respondent. The advantages of this approach include a generally high response rate to the questionnaire and that respondents have the opportunity to clarify their answers.

To ensure high quality results of the survey, ASE (though IERPE) hosted a training from October 29th to November 2nd for all field surveyors. This training aimed to explain the survey bases to interviewers in order to maximize the quality of their work and understanding of the survey process, thus maximizing the quality of the responses.

USAID’s work advances U.S. national security and economic prosperity, demonstrates American generosity, and promotes a path to recipient self-reliance and resilience. USAID provides development assistance to help partner countries on their own development journey to self-reliance. They look at ways to help lift lives and build communities, and thus have chosen to conduct in partnership this study with ASE.