over the phone (Aggarwal et al., 2021; Picchioni et al., 2021). Higher frequency data collection may also be preferable for monitoring food security (Knippenberg et al., 2019).<sup>8</sup> Finally, for some agricultural variables in-person visits remain strictly preferable. This is the case for those variables for which plot-level information or physical measurements are sought, such as inventories of agricultural parcels/plots and crops planted as well as land area owned or cultivated, for which measurement with GPS devices is best practice in low-income, smallholder settings (Carletto et al., 2017; Dillon et al., 2021). GPS land area measurement relies on trained interviewers being on-site. Even when land area measurement is based only on farmer-reporting, taking a full inventory of parcels/plots and the crops planted on them is complex and important enough to warrant an in-person visit, where possible. Given the problem of long recall periods, these variables are probably best collected in a pre- or postplanting visit. Similarly, in the case of seasonal crops harvest in-person harvest or post-harvest visit will be necessary if crop-cutting is included in the survey. Even without crop cutting, the level of complexity and length of best-practice harvest modules makes them suitable for in-person data collection and not appropriate for data collection over the phone. Phone surveys may however be used to support harvest diaries such as was done by Kilic et al. (2021) and Deininger et al. (2012). A summary of survey topics and their estimated suitability for implementation via phone survey is presented in Table 2.

_Table 2. Potential for data collection over the phone by survey topics and data types_

|**Topic/Data Type**|**Suitable for**<br>**phone**<br>**surveys **|**Comments**|**References**|
|---|---|---|---|
|Food security|Yes|Higher frequency data collection, including<br>over the phone, may be beneficial. The<br>metadata for the Food Consumption Score<br>(FCS) recommends implementation every 1<br>to 6 months if the objective is to monitor<br>food security, and food frequency data are<br>collected over the phone. For FIES, FAO<br>recommends to randomly rotate the sample<br>amongrounds.|Knippenberg et al.<br>(2019); Amankwah and<br>Gourlay (2021); Horjus<br>(2010); Picchioni et al.<br>(2021); personal<br>communication with FAO<br>FIES Team<sup>8</sup>|
|Consumption|Not for full-<br>fledged,<br>expenditure<br>module|Phone surveys unlikely to be suitable to<br>administer either weekly diaries or a full-<br>fledged 7-day recall module. Even the 24-<br>hour recall has notperformed well in tests.|Abate et al. (2021);<br>Aggarwal et al. (2021)|
|Land inventory,<br>plot<br>characteristics,<br>and land area|No|Plot level interviews too burdensome for<br>phone interviewing. Best-practice GPS land<br>area measurement requires in-person visit.|Dillon et al. (2021)|

8 The Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) proved to be a valid tool when applied in repeated surveys. More specifically, in case of surveys repeated in short intervals and more importantly in case of panels, FAO recommends to randomly rotate the sample among rounds, avoiding asking the same questions to the same people after a short period of time, thus minimizing dropouts and adaptation strategies. In these cases, FAO also advises to use shorter recall periods that do not overlap among rounds (FAO FIES Team, personal communication, March 2022).

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