After two days of field testing and feeling pretty good about survey, we met with a woman named Marge Koblinsky, a great in the field of MCH who works for both John Snow Inc and is on the board of White Ribbon Alliance, who basically told us our survey was confusing and we needed to start over. This was on a Friday morning and we were scheduled to leave for our first district on Sunday. Awesome. Thankfully she had some time to lend a helping hand and all Friday morning we worked on the best approach to the data we wanted to get and finally decided that we needed to have three separate surveys, one for pregnant women, one for postpartum who delivered in facilities and one for postpartum who didn't deliver at facilities (typically home). The skip pattern we had created in the original document was too confusing to follow, which wouldn't be a problem except for that we're planning on sending the survey to two districts where other staff will administered it. Needless to say, it needs to be crystal clear. Around 1:30 on Friday we had an idea of what we needed to do, and I worked all Friday evening and Saturday to fix the three surveys and make them as perfect as possible.
In the end, Marge's help turned out to be integral to our survey. The frustrating part is that we were basically left on our own until the very last minute to create a survey, with little direction or oversight. In general there has been little coordination or direction to help us, which is odd considering the office here is interested in the results. I had hoped for more help, but I guess in the "real world" that help can come at the 11th hour and that I should be ready for last minute changes. However, my super organized, somewhat OCD personality takes issue with this. Ah, the challenges of working with others.
