A Practical Guide to Fieldwork Training

Surveys play a crucial role informing social research, official statistics, and ultimately, public policy design. Unfortunately however, all too often there is a significant quality problem, with surveys producing data that are unreliable or misleading, compromising evidence-based decision-making. To improve survey quality across the development sector, the World Bank’s Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) team initiated a series of practical guides.

rowsquared was selected to co-author the first guidebook in this series due to our extensive expertise in survey methodology and fieldwork implementation. We collaborated with the LSMS team to develop “A Practical Guide to Fieldwork Training”, focusing on one of the most crucial yet often neglected aspects of survey implementation.

The comprehensive guide provides actionable advice for planning and delivering effective fieldwork training without overburdening trainers or stretching survey resources. It includes practical tools like illustrative training schedules, assessment methods, and role-specific recommendations for survey designers, funders, managers, and trainers.

Published as an interactive e-book on GitHub—a first for the LSMS—the guidebook serves as a dynamic knowledge base that can be regularly updated with new insights and methodologies.

The guide has received significant attention and has become a widely used resource for survey practitioners worldwide, helping to improve data quality.

The guidebook is available here.