The events of 2020 were unlike any the globe has experienced before, with COVID-19 dominating lives around the world for most of the year. Individual’s routines have dramatically changed, and both global economies and individual finances have suffered due to the fallout from COVID-19. In the midst of all of this, in-person data collection methodologies were no longer feasible at a time when accurate, timely data was needed more than ever. This led to a surge in the need for remote research methodologies, both for studies that directly examined the impact of COVID-19 and for longer-term projects which were suddenly unable to conduct research through traditional methodologies. In countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, mobile-based methodologies such as Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing became the best way to gather insights from hard-to-reach populations.

GeoPoll has been building our mobile-based research platform for almost ten years, and as COVID-19 accelerated the need for remote solutions, our team rose to the challenge. We opened new call centers, expanded our global reach, and conducted over 4.4 million surveys on important topics including food security, the economic impacts of COVID-19, changes in consumer behavior, and more. Throughout this, we also made enhancements to several of our existing products, launched a brand new GeoPoll Application, added functionality to our CATI application, and created dashboards to better monitor data quality throughout the project lifecycle.

In addition to the studies we ran on COVID-19, we conducted studies on Kenya’s media landscape throughout the year, influencer marketing in Nigeria and Kenya, and the humanitarian crisis in Tigray, Ethiopia. We spoke to GeoPoll team members including Nicolette Lok, VP of Operations, Benard Okasi, Director of Research, and Wycliffe Litabalia, Survey Operations Manager, on what it takes to succeed in their line of work. And we continued to build our library of research content, writing articles on data weighting, sampling frames, and quantitative vs qualitative research.

As always, you can find all of GeoPoll’s studies on the GeoPoll blog, and our coronavirus-specific research in our COVID-19 resource portal. If you would like to learn more about GeoPoll’s capabilities conducting remote research in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, please contact us.

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A more apt comparison for the humanitarian community is the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The Ebola virus has a high death rate, and the outbreak in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea resulted in lockdowns similar to those now being seen on a much larger scale. GeoPoll’s experience conducting research during Ebola outbreaks aligns with the shifts from face-to-face to remote research we are seeing now, and the humanitarian community is also looking to its experience with Ebola to guide its response to COVID-19 around the globe.

Prepare for Long-Term Impacts to Food Security and Economies

One of the main areas of comparison between Ebola and coronavirus is the long-term impacts that come with a disease outbreak. During and after the Ebola outbreak, food security and economic impacts were a major concern. GeoPoll’s study with USAID and FHI360 on long-term economic impacts of Ebola found that from June 2014 to June 2015 32% in Liberia and 45% of respondents in Sierra Leone reported that income had dropped in the past year. We also used our remote methodology to study food insecurity and market operability, finding that those in the Ebola epicenters had higher food insecurity than surrounding areas, and that as the disease continued to spread markets were operating at reduced capacity.

As coronavirus spreads to developing regions in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, there are already concerns around the food availability, unrest, and economic impacts that will follow. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization has warned that a global food crisis is possible unless measures are taken to protect the food supply chain, and it is likely that food prices will also rise. Additionally, lockdowns and social distancing measures are likely to have an outsized impact on countries that rely on informal markets and exports of commodities including oil. In countries that already suffer from food insecurity and unstable economies, coronavirus could have a devastating effect on food security and wellbeing. Humanitarian organizations must act rapidly to prevent widespread food insecurity and other hardships, but they are also dealing with the need to quickly adapt systems to a new environment.

Adapt Aid and Research Systems

To prevent worst-case scenarios from occurring, the humanitarian community must work together to prevent the spread of COVID-19 from overwhelming fragile healthcare systems and economies. However, as we saw the Ebola outbreak, there will be challenges surrounding aid delivery and monitoring of situations on-the-ground. Due to the travel restrictions that have been implemented to stop coronavirus’ spread, aid organizations are already experiencing challenges delivering required goods. Gavi, the vaccine alliance, has stated that 21 countries are experiencing vaccine shortages due to travel disruptions, and farmers in Kenya have been left without supplies to fight the worst locust infestation seen in years.

Additionally, aid organizations and their workers are grappling with the decision to stay and help those who are in need or protect themselves from the virus. The World Health Organization found that during the West African Ebola outbreak, healthcare workers were over 20 times more likely to become infected than the general population, a statistic that we may see repeated with the COVID-19 outbreak.

These factors present a challenge for humanitarian organizations that are looking to monitor indicators such as food security and then deliver the necessary aid to vulnerable populations. During the Ebola outbreak, GeoPoll watched as development organizations shifted their data collection from in-person to remote methodologies. With partners including USAID, Keystone Accountability, and FEWS Net, we completed over 200,000 surveys of those living in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea that enabled development organizations to better respond to the disease outbreak.

While it is impossible to conduct business as usual during a global pandemic, the Ebola response taught us that by quickly adapting, it is possible to gather the vital information needed to assist the global response. The effects of coronavirus will be felt for years to come, but by looking to lessons learned during previous disease outbreaks and quickly scaling to meet anticipated needs, organizations like ours can help those most in need.

To learn about GeoPoll’s efforts to aid the international response to coronavirus and view our free reports on the topic, visit our coronavirus resources page.

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Collecting data–individual pieces of information that are compiled into insights on everything from employment to brand preference–is a vital part of any organization’s operations. Marketers use data to better understand consumer habits and purchasing trends, media organizations use ratings data to understand their reach and audience profiles, and governments and NGOs use household data in order to gauge the effectiveness of their programs, and assess needs in specific areas.

It’s no question that data is valuable, but actually gathering the data required to provide insights and make data-driven decisions can be a challenge in many areas of the world. In countries such as South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya, informal trade accounts for a large percentage of purchases, meaning brands do not get the type of in-depth purchase data that they would from established supermarkets and stores in developed countries. Household-level data is also not readily available. In both of these cases, companies and organizations looking to get this data often have to collect it themselves, through surveys, focus groups, and other primary data collection methods.

Face-to-face data collection history

Historically, to gather primary data in less developed regions such as Africa, researchers would have to engage on-the-ground enumerators to go house to house, finding respondents willing to take a survey and noting responses down on either paper forms or with a digital device used to capture responses. This system is inefficient for several reasons: It is time-consuming to recruit and train trusted enumerators, once started, data collection can take weeks due to the slow pace of going door to door in areas where houses may be spread out, and data is at risk of being lost or falsified by enumerators. In addition, the lengthy process makes this type of data collection expensive.

Remote, mobile survey data collection

Remote data collection has now emerged as a viable alternative, thanks to the increasing prevalence of the mobile phone in emerging economies. Remote data collection has been utilized in developed countries through landline telephones for many years, but the lack of landline infrastructure in many countries prevented it from taking off in regions such as Africa and Latin America. However, in the past 5 years mobile connectivity has Xed in markets such as Kenya, where X are estimated to now have access to a mobile phone, and South Africa, which has an X% mobile penetration rate. The higher percentage of households who have at least one mobile phone through which they can receive text messages and voice calls, some of which also have mobile internet connections, has made remote data collection a possibility in regions where in-person data collection has long been the norm.

Some of the advantages of remote data collection include:

• Speed: Remote data collection through respondents’ own mobile devices can be administered very quickly, allowing brands to react to current events and development organizations to gather vital information following a crisis. GeoPoll can help design a questionnaire or research project and deploy it within days, and once data collection begins results come back in near real-time. 
• Cost: Though cost varies depending on the remote mode you use to collect data, gathering data remotely is less expensive than in-person data collection, as it does not require in-person enumerators to travel to multiple locations.
• Reach: One of the greatest advantages of collecting data remotely is the volume that can be collected within a short time frame. By sending surveys through a partner such as GeoPoll, which is directly integrated with mobile network operators around the world and can handle large messaging volumes, you can gather thousands of survey responses quickly. Data can be collected from a variety of locations at once, so you can gather data from both urban and rural areas, specific locations, and even multiple countries at the same time.

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