Appendix 3.

Summary of the advantages and disadvantages of paper-based surveys as perceived or observed by interviewers and respondents in RDSS.

Interviewer’s perception (author’s opinion)		Respondent’s perception
Advantage	Disadvantage	Advantage	Disadvantage
Unspoken but common understanding between interviewers and respondents that ‘you know the questions’ or ‘we know the answers you need’ (It makes the survey more prone to skipping of questions and in turn jeopardize overall data integrity.)	Recording people’s particular afresh on paper leads to more time needed to manual resolving of consistency of data across households and members within the same household
	Many papers to carry and much hardre to protect them in case of rain (contributes to survey fatigue to interviewers)
	Double data entry creates need for many more contacts with data room for resolving data consistency issues (increases the chance of data errors on new event forms particularly on people’s permanent IDs)	It leads to more time needed to resolve an error related to consistency of data
It allows partial recording of data while at a household. Other information goes on lose sheet for later transfer on dedicated survey form. (This makes survey values more prone to recall effect, as interviewers might not be able to recall them all and precisely).