Our Remote Data Collection Tools

If you’ve familiarized yourself with Kuja Kuja’s work over the past few years, this means you’ve seen our Insight Associates, in communities, collecting feedback from respondents with a smile and cheerful, welcoming attitude.  This quickly became difficult as the COVID-19 crisis turned into a pandemic.  Last week, I mentioned that we pivoted quickly to remote data collection.  We didn’t want our staff risking themselves, or others, as vectors of the virus. Now, Kuja Kuja is continuing to reach our respondents through phone surveys, toll-free lines, webforms, and a chatbot available via Facebook and WhatsApp. Across our operational footprint, most have cell phones, but not necessarily phones with data.

When phone surveying and using toll-free lines, the community speaks directly to our Insight Associates, who walk them through the data collection.  This has allowed us to keep our personal, customer service touch, and reach those without access to internet or who may not be literate.The webform is low-bandwidth, allowing those with limited internet access to respond on their own, and the chatbot is our higher-tech solution for remote collection.

We are still learning how bias, including both accessibility and digital literacy, may affect the data we collect in these approaches, but we also believe that we can reach a much broader community audience through these methods. We’ll continue to trial these approaches alongside others - such as Guided Share, where an Insight Associate takes some time over the phone to walk a respondent through the remote tools - so that we can hear and uplift as many voices as possible, no matter the location or operational challenges.