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Round 1 Sample Design

For the first round of data collection at the National level in Niger, the survey used a sampling frame provided by the fourth General Census of Population and Housing (RGPH) conducted by Niger’s National Statistics Institute (INS) in 2012. The sampling frame is made up of primary sampling units (PSU), each of which are made up of 3 to 5 enumeration areas (EA). The PSUs were selected using probability proportional to size from the sampling frame, within two strata, urban and rural. Fifty-one PSUs were selected using probability proportional to size (PPS) among these strata. Once the PSUs were selected, EAs within each PSU that were too small (<150 households) were regrouped with contiguous EAs. In the event that the EA was too large (≥ 600 households), it was divided into smaller segments and one segment was randomly selected using PPS to the size of the segment. The 51 selected EAs were combined with 33 EAs in Niamey (sample design below) to make the national-level sample.

In each selected EA cluster, households and private health facilities were listed and mapped. Field supervisors randomly selected 35 households from the household listing using a random start method. A household roster was completed and all eligible women age 15-49 in selected households were approached and asked to provide informed consent (and assent if aged 15-17 years) to participate in the study.

For the SDP survey, up to three private SDPs, including pharmacies, within each sampled EA cluster boundary were randomly selected from the listing. In addition, three public health SDPs (lowest, second-lowest and third-lowest level) designated to serve each EA population were selected.

Sample Update

The PSUs of the º£½Ç»»ÆÞ Niger survey are enumeration areas (EAs) obtained from the RGPH conducted by Niger’s National Statistics Institute (INS) in 2012. The sampling frame is made up of PSUs, which themselves are made up of 3 to 5 EA. These PSUs are divided up among Niamey's 5 communes according to size. Thirty-three PSUs were selected using probability proportional to size (PPS) among these strata. Once the PSUs were selected, EAs within each PSU that were too small (<150 households) were regrouped with contiguous EAs. In the event that the EA was too large (≥ 600 households), it was divided into smaller segments and one segment was randomly selected using PPS to the size of the segment.

In each selected EA cluster, households and private health facilities were listed and mapped. Field supervisors randomly selected 35 households from the household listing using a random start method. A household roster was completed and all eligible women age 15-49 in selected households were approached and asked to provide informed consent to participate in the study.

The majority of SDPs are repeated in each round, forming a panel survey. If an EA had more than three private SDPs identified during the listing process, then a new, random sample of three private SDPs is selected during each round.

º£½Ç»»ÆÞ2020 uses standardized questionnaires to gather data about households, individual females, and service delivery points that are comparable across program countries and consistent with existing national surveys. Prior to launching the survey in each country, local experts review and modify these questionnaires to ensure all questions are appropriate to each setting. Three questionnaires were used to collect º£½Ç»»ÆÞ2017/Niger survey data: the household questionnaire, the female questionnaire and the service delivery point questionnaire.

The household, female and service delivery point questionnaires were based on model surveys designed by º£½Ç»»ÆÞ2020 staff at the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Niger Institut National de la Statistique (INS), and fieldwork materials of the Niger Demographic and Health Survey (DHS).

All º£½Ç»»ÆÞ2020 questionnaires are administered using Open Data Kit (ODK) software and Android smartphones. The º£½Ç»»ÆÞ2017/Niger questionnaires were in French on the phone. The interviews were conducted in French or often translated orally into Haussa, Djerma, or other local languages depending on respondent preferences. Female resident enumerators (data collectors) in each enumeration area (EA) administered the household and female questionnaires in the selected households and the SDP questionnaire for sampled private SDPs. Field supervisors administered the SDP questionnaire in public SDPs.

The household questionnaire gathers basic information about the household, such as ownership of livestock and durable goods, as well as characteristics of the dwelling unit, including wall, floor and roof materials, water sources, and sanitation facilities. This information is used to construct a wealth index.

The first section of the household questionnaire, the household roster, lists basic demographic information about all usual members of the household and visitors who stayed with the household the night before the interview. This roster is used to identify eligible respondents for the female questionnaire. In addition to the roster, the household questionnaire also gathers data that are used to measure key water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) indicators, including regular sources and uses of WASH facilities used and prevalence of open defecation by household members.

The female questionnaire is used to collect information from all women age 15 to 49 who were listed on the household roster at selected households. The female questionnaire gathers specific information on: education; fertility and fertility preferences; family planning access, choice and use; quality of family planning services; and exposure to family planning messaging in the media.

The SDP questionnaire collected information about the provision and quality of reproductive health services and products, integration of health services, and water and sanitation within the SDP.

Training

The º£½Ç»»ÆÞ2017/Niger fieldwork training started in the spring of 2015 with training of additional field supervisors alongside resident enumerators, to take into consideration scale-up for national data collection. The training was co-led by º£½Ç»»ÆÞ2020 staff from the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,and Institut National de la Statistique du Niger (INS) project staff.

Throughout the five-day training, REs and supervisors were evaluated based on their performance on several written and phone-based assessments, mock field exercises and class participation. The RE training sessions were conducted primarily in French, with small group oral translation sessions conducted in the local languages to standardize translations among languages that would be used to administer the questionnaires in selected EAs.

Data Collection & Processing

Data collection was conducted between May to September 2017. Unlike traditional paper-and-pencil surveys, º£½Ç»»ÆÞ2020 uses ODK Collect, an open-source software application, to collect data on mobile phones. All the questionnaires were programmed using this software and installed onto all project smartphones. The ODK questionnaire forms are programmed with automatic skip-patterns and built-in response constraints to reduce data entry errors.

The ODK application enabled REs and supervisors to collect and transfer survey data to a central ODK Aggregate cloud server. This instantaneous aggregation of data also allowed for concurrent data processing and course corrections while º£½Ç»»ÆÞ2020 was still active in the field. Throughout data collection, the central staff at INS in Niger and the data manager at the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland routinely monitored the incoming data and notified field staff of any potential errors, missing data or problems found with form submissions on the central server.

The use of mobile phones combined data collection and data entry into one step; therefore, data entry was completed when the last interview form was uploaded at the end of data collection in September.

Once all data were on the server, data analysts cleaned and de-identified the data, applied survey weights and prepared the final dataset for analysis using Stata statistical software.

This table shows response rates for household and female respondents for º£½Ç»»ÆÞ2017/Niger. A total of 2,904 households were selected for the º£½Ç»»ÆÞ2017/Niger survey; 2,836 households were found to be occupied at the time of the fieldwork. Of the occupied households, 2,784 (98.2%) consented to and completed a household-level interview. The response rate at the household level was similar in urban (97.6%) relative to the rural (99.0%) enumeration areas (EAs).

In the occupied households that provided an interview, a total of 3,180 eligible women aged 15 to 49 years were identified. Overall, 95.4% of the eligible women were available and consented to and completed the interview. The female response rate was similar in the rural (95.2%) relative to the urban (95.5%) EAs.

Only de facto females are included in the º£½Ç»»ÆÞ analyses; the final completed de facto female sample size was 3,020 (unweighted).

During the survey, 137 SDPs were identified of which 132 SDPs completed the survey (96.4% response rate).

Weights were adjusted for non-response at the household and individual levels and applied to all household and individual estimates in this report. SDP estimates are not weighted.

To view the sample errors for the º£½Ç»»ÆÞ2020 indicators described above, download the full SOI report here. For more information about º£½Ç»»ÆÞ2020 indicators, including estimate type and base population, click here.