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Challenges and lessons for measuring soil metrics in household surveys

ABSTRACT: Highlights • The accuracy of farmer’s elicitation and miniaturized spectrometers is assessed in rural Ethiopia.• Farmer’s elicitation do not converge with objective metrics.• Miniaturized spectrometers provide accurate data for the identification of soil constraints.• Miniaturized spectrometers provide approximate quantitative predictions. While the importance of soils in agriculture cannot be overlooked, plot level soil data remain scarce in the current data landscape. Large-scale household surveys efforts are increasing in low-income countries and assessing the accuracy, scalability and cost-effectiveness of available methods is crucial. Here, we firstly explore soil data requirements for a set of objectives that include identifying a soil constraint, improving recommendation domain studies and capturing soil metrics as covariates, or as outcomes. We then expose the lessons learned from a methodological experiment in rural Ethiopia, where different approaches – farmer’s self-elicitation and miniaturized spectrometers – are compared against laboratory benchmarks for a set of soil parameters: soil texture, soil pH and soil organic C. With the exception of soil particle sizes, we find that soil parameters captured through farmer’s elicitation do not converge with objective metrics. Miniaturized spectrometers can provide reasonably accurate data for the identification of soil constraints – soil acidity, low organic C or sandy soils. Approximate quantitative predictions can also be delivered for soil pH (R2 = 0.72) and organic C (R2 = 0.60). The additional costs of plot sampling and analysis are in the range of $19–$23 per sample, with the additional percentage of plots with correct data equivalent to 10% for the identification of sandy soils, 75% for low organic C and 89% of acidic soils.

SUBMITTER: Kosmowski F

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7386900 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:Aside from breastfeeding, there are little data on use of essential newborn care practices, such as thermal protection and hygienic cord care, in high mortality countries. These practices have not typically been measured in national household surveys, often the main source for coverage data in these settings. The Every Newborn Action Plan proposed early breastfeeding as a tracer for essential newborn care due to data availability and evidence for the benefits of breastfeeding. In the past decade, a few national surveys have added questions on other practices, presenting an opportunity to assess the performance of early breastfeeding initiation as a tracer indicator.We identified twelve national surveys between 2005-2014 that included at least one indicator for immediate newborn care in addition to breastfeeding. Because question wording and reference populations varied, we standardized data to the extent possible to estimate coverage of newborn care practices, accounting for strata and multistage survey design. We assessed early breastfeeding as a tracer by: 1) examining associations with other indicators using Pearson correlations; and 2) stratifying by early breastfeeding to determine differences in coverage of other practices for initiators vs non-initiators in each survey, then pooling across surveys for a meta-analysis, using the inverse standard error as the weight for each observation.Associations between pairs of coverage indicators are generally weak, including those with breastfeeding. The exception is drying and wrapping, which have the strongest association of any two interventions in all five surveys where measured; estimated correlations for this range from 0.47 in Bangladesh's 2007 DHS to 0.83 in Nepal's 2006 DHS. The contrast in coverage for other practices by early breastfeeding is generally small; the greatest absolute difference was 6.7%, between coverage of immediate drying for newborns breastfed early compared to those who were not.Early initiation of breastfeeding is not a high performing tracer indicator for essential newborn care practices measured in previous national surveys. To have informative data on whether newborns are getting life-saving services, standardized questions about specific practices, in addition to breastfeeding initiation, need to be added to surveys.

Project description:BackgroundData collection is the most critical stage in any population health study and correctly implementing fieldwork enhances the quality of collected information. However, even the most carefully planned large-scale household surveys can encounter many context-specific issues. This paper reflected on our research team's recent experience conducting surveys for a quasi-experimental evaluation of a reproductive health program in urban areas of Karachi, Pakistan. We aim to describe the issues encountered and lessons learned from this process, and present some potential solutions for conducting future household surveys in similar urban environments.MethodsThe study followed a three-stage random sampling design. Initially, a Geographical Information System (GIS) was used to construct the sampling frame with union council (UC) area mapping and cluster demarcation followed by random selection of clusters in the selected UCs within the intervention and control sites. The second stage involved a complete household listing in selected clusters and the final stage was a random sampling of households with eligible women.ResultThis paper describes the issues that were encountered including technical problems related to GIS demarcation of cluster boundaries and hand-held devices for computer assisted personal interviews (CAPI), household listing, interviewing respondents on sensitive topics and their expectations, and ensuring privacy during the survey.ConclusionThis study identifies a number of unique barriers to conducting household surveys in Karachi and highlights some key lessons for survey research in urban settlements. GIS mapping technology is a cost-effective method for developing sampling frames in resource-constrained settings. Secondly, the strategy of interviewing women immediately after the cluster is listed may be applied to make it easier to re-locate selected respondents and to reduce loss-to-follow up. Understanding local norms and developing culturally appropriate strategies to build trust with communities may significantly improve survey participation. Researchers should hire experienced female enumerators and provide continuous training on best practices for interviewing women on sensitive reproductive health topics in urban communities.

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Challenges and lessons for measuring soil metrics in household surveys

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