The purpose of supervised visits is to ensure field workers’ adherence to and maintenance of acceptable quality standards in household entry procedures, obtaining and documentation of informed consent, data collection (including but not limited to completeness and accuracy of data records). The supervisor observes and records the field workers' adherence to procedures throughout the interview and only provides feedback, as part of immediate training, to the fieldworker upon leaving the household. Each fieldworker should have supervised visit regularly done for them; for example once every 2 months. Supervised visits should also be done more frequently for newly recruited field workers and/or when new data forms or procedures are introduced. 

Certain measures are employed to ensure that field workers meet satisfactory levels of performance. It is universally recognized that adequate supervision is a prerequisite for quality data.  In any survey research, if supervision of data collection is not adequate, it leaves enough room for one to be sceptical about the reliability and validity of the data. To ensure maximum reliability and validity of Kintampo Demographic Surveillance System data, an intensive but simple supervision procedure is adopted.  This supervision procedure includes the following measures:

The supervisors form part of the fieldwork team.  Their main purpose is to ensure that high standards for data collection are maintained all the time by helping field workers to improve their work.  This is mainly achieved through series of supervisory visits to each fieldworker (FW).  Supervisors also form the link between the fieldworker and the field office, and are the avenue through which any problems or suggestions should be fed.  One supervisor is assigned to a small group of field workers who they work with in their assigned Field Work Area (FWA).

Specifically, the role of supervisors is to:

The best way to see whether a field worker is performing well is to observe him/her performing their assigned job.  This should be followed by a discussion of the supervisor’s assessment, based on the observations and the field worker general performance.  This is also the time to discuss any important areas in which the field worker can improve before the next visit.  These may be:

The discussion should happen after the FW has completed a particular visit and should take place outside the home where the interview was conducted. The supervisor should NOT interrupt the home visit unless a serious error is being committed, but should note their observations and the issues they want to discuss or feedback in their notebook during the home visit.  If the error being committed is serious and will affect the quality of the data he/she has to correct in a manner that will be a contribution to the interviewing process, so that the respondent will not feel the fieldworker is inferior. The feedback meeting afterwards is also a time when the FW may want to discuss other problems relating to their work which may not necessarily have arisen during the visit.  It is important that the FW and the supervisor reach agreement on any problems identified and the solutions proposed.  Remember that it may be necessary to continue to the next visit to observe whether the suggested solutions will be implemented.

There are three different types of supervisory visits, each of which takes place in the field.  These comprise; scheduled visits; random unscheduled visits; and check visits. Supervisors with the help of the Field Manager should always draw a schedule for these visits and only the scheduled visit should be communicated to the fieldworker and appointment made to meet the fieldworker at a specified time in a location agreed on by both the supervisor and fieldworker. The fieldworker is required to wait for the supervisor to join him/her at the appointed time before continuing with their visits.  

For this visit the supervisor visits a household at the same time as a fieldworker, having made an appointment with the fieldworker to observe him/her actually administering forms or updating the Household Record Book. It is an extension of the fieldworker training. The supervisor should try to help the fieldworker resolve any problems he/she may be having with the system and should evaluate the fieldworker’s understanding of the concepts and procedures.

The random unscheduled visit is not by appointment and as such must not be communicated to the fieldworker.  In this case, the supervisor decides who to visit, and will look for the fieldworker in the area they are working that day.  Because these visits are unannounced, they provide an opportunity to pick up any “bad” practices that may have cropped up in the course of fieldwork. They observe how field workers behave with the respondents, how they interview the respondents and how information is recorded. The supervisor may base his/her decision on who to visit on problems they may have picked up from checking the Household Record Book (HRB) and forms returned by a specific fieldworker, from problems notified by the Computer Centre, from issues arising out of the weekly fieldwork meetings, or from problems informally notified by a staff or a community member.  However, the fieldworker should not necessarily assume that he/she is doing something wrong if the supervisor pays an unscheduled visit. He/she must continue the work as normal.  If the supervisors find mistakes they should explain the mistakes to the fieldworker immediately (usually in private as the case should be) and help him/her to correct the mistakes.  It is also possible that the supervisor may be in the fieldworker’s Field work Area for something else and just decided to see how he/she is doing.

In a check visit, the supervisor makes a visit to the household on his own without the fieldworker present.  This visit may be performed for several reasons, to:

Supervisors have other important office- based duties apart from the field visits and direct support to FW.  These include:

It is very important that both supervisors and FW see the supervisory visits as an opportunity to improve upon practice, rather than as a tool for “policing” or picking up problems.  The supervisor is a friend of the fieldworker, his/her voice and link to the field office.  If he/she have any problems related to the work, for example if he/she has not been provided with enough forms for the visits or his/her bicycle is broken, it is the responsibility of the supervisor to ensure that they are resolved.