A FOUR-MEMBER team is monitoring the collection of data from enumerators on field for the Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) 2024-2025 to ensure the questionnaires are correctly answered and adhere to the standards expected by the National Statistics Office.
Since the commencement of the survey field work in October last year, the team has been checking all the questionnaires sent in by the HIES enumerators within the country and approving them.
The team consists of Danny Asa, John Manakako, Thomas Gogomo and Elizabeth Tsara who were each assigned to the country’s nine provinces and Honiara to monitor their data collection.
Mr Asa looks after Honiara and Renbel Province, whilst Mr Manakako looks after Guadalcanal and Central Islands Provinces. Mr Gogomo monitors Western, Choiseul and Isabel Provinces, whilst Ellizabeth looks after Malaita, Makira-Ulawa and Temotu Provinces.
These officers are responsible to carry out data compliance checks to ensure the data complies with the National Statistics Office’s basic data best practices.
The group also oversees and manages HIES data in close liaison with NSO Provincial coordinators and the field teams to ensure accuracy and timely reporting for the HIES data collection and processing.
They coordinate data collection from the NSO headquarter and HIES field teams in close liaison with the provincial coordinators and discuss concerns raised by enumerators on field.
“We thoroughly check all the questionnaires after being send in to ensure the sampling ids are right and the measuring units are correct.
“If there is any inaccuracy, we will reject the questionnaires and ask the enumerators to comment on the questions that we have issues with or adjust the question when asking the respondent. Sometimes we see the prices for certain goods are very high, we ask them to reconfirm these answers with the respondents.
“If there are no issues with the questionnaires, we will approve them for inclusion in the headquarter data,” the team said.
The HIES is now in its 18th week since commencing last October and is progressing according to schedule.
It is a 12-month survey under Component 1 of the Building Capacity in Statistics and Audit (CAPSA) Project, a joint project between the Solomon Islands Government and the World Bank.
The Solomon Islands National Statistics Office is implementing the HIES.
— SINSO
