IDEAS Survey Team Co-Teaches Research Methods Course with LUMS Faculty
IDEAS survey wing leads and co-founders Mohammad Malik and Ahsan Tariq co-taught a course with faculty from the LUMS economics and anthropology departments during Fall Semester 2023. This was the second iteration of the course titled ‘Putting Social Science to the Test: Mixed-Methods Approaches to Lahore’s Developmental Challenges,’ which was first offered in Fall 2022. This innovative undergraduate course is essentially a research methods course that offers students a unique opportunity to develop and deploy field research skills in order to understand developmental challenges at the community level. Given their vast experience in managing large-scale data collection, our team co-developed this course with LUMS faculty, adding a field-based survey activity of four weeks to the course syllabus, with the specific learning objectives of providing students with exposure to the rigors of survey design and data collection in real-time field settings across Lahore. The primary instructor for the course is Dr. Farah Said (Assistant Professor of Economics), while secondary instructors include Dr. Ali Cheema (Vice Chancellor LUMS and Associate Professor of Economics), Dr. Ghazal Asif (Assistant Professor of Anthropology) and Dr. Ameem Lufti (Assistant Professor of Anthropology).
Cross-listed for both economics and anthropology majors, the course delves into the economics of household decision-making, women’s labor force participation, financial literacy and mobility, and intra-household decision making in the context of developing countries. In the weeks leading up to the field activity, students study theoretical frameworks in household economics, qualitative data collection methods, focus group design, quantitative research and sampling methods, particularly with respect to the measurement of household preferences and decision-making. Students then spend three weeks preparing for the field activity, working on their survey questionnaire design and review, and learning about field protocols and risk management in the field. During this preparatory period, the IDEAS team co-teaches classes at LUMS with the LUMS faculty, walking them through data collection life cycle, sampling strategy, monitoring techniques and the usage of data collection application (SurveyCTO).
The four week field activity is closely monitored by the IDEAS survey team leads as student teams navigate their respective field sites and apply research skills learnt during coursework. With a very applied approach of taking social sciences out of the classroom, students have the opportunity to empirically document and learn about how power is structured within households. Groups of students are provided with pin locations to a neighbourhood within Lahore, where they sample and survey household respondents regarding gender roles and norms, and gendered differences in household preferences. Data is fed in real time through the SurveyCTO app using phones and monitored by the IDEAS team for quality and robustness. Students are required to complete atleast 12 weekly hours per student in the field, and visit 250 households by the end of the field activity as a class. Quality assurance of data and adeherence to protocols is conducted by the IDEAS survey team through spot checks, data checks, logical checks and back checks. By the end of the survey activity, students have had experience administering a survey of their own design from end-to-end, collecting quantitative and qualitative data, designing a questionnaire, analyzing and cleaning data for analysis. Students also get hands-on training in encountering and dealing with unexpected challenges in the field, and learn about research standards and ethics, sampling methods, randomization in data collection, and ensuring methodological robustness.
The survey wing at IDEAS was established in 2017 as an in-house department with the infrastructural capacity to conduct multiple survey activities for ongoing research projects. Our team has now completed around 75 projects for a variety of donor-funded research projects and individual researchers, and possesses the specialized knowledge to help teams collect high quality and reliable data from the field. From conducting large-scale quantitative surveys to administering a spectrum of qualitative tools, our team can assist with all stages of the survey cycle including stakeholder management and coordination, sampling assistance, survey design support, respondent database maintenance, preliminary analysis of key variables of interest, etc. The aim and vision of the survey wing from inception has been to conduct field activities from the lens of the researcher, and provide a one-stop solution to individual researchers and organizations for the execution and management of fieldwork and research experiments.
The survey department has worked on a variety of interdisciplinary projects, and now boasts a team of 150+ trained field staff that facilitate the collection of real time electronic data through the use of tablets. Most recently, the survey team has expanded the scope of their services across all four provinces of Pakistan, including ICT, Gilgit Baltistan and AJK. Our experienced team undertakes primary data collection for several ongoing research projects at IDEAS, and also provides services to external organizations/researchers. The survey team can provide researchers support in pre-grant stages as well. To learn more, please contact our survey team leads for a quotation for their services.