# **5. Conclusion**

The goal of this paper is to showcase the power of paradata in generating operationally relevant insights to assist in designing household surveys and improving the quality of survey data collection in low- and middle-income countries. The analysis utilizes the timestamped paradata for the nationally representative household surveys that were implemented by NSOs in Cambodia, Ethiopia and Tanzania between 2018 and 2020. Each survey coupled a multi-topic socioeconomic household questionnaire with an individual questionnaire that was attempted to be administered to adult household members in private and that elicited in-depth individual-level data on a range of topics, with a strong focus on labor and asset ownership. Our paper conducts a range of analyses related to interview length that yielded interview length estimates at the module-, individual-, and household-level; unit cost estimates as a function of interview length and total survey budget; and estimates of interviewer effects on variation in module duration.

Module duration estimates constitute useful reference points for survey practitioners aiming to conduct similar data collection in comparable contexts. Often the decision concerning whether to include an additional module or an additional person to interview depends on how this would affect overall interview burden and overall cost. Due to the disaggregated nature of paradata, the smallest unit of analysis is an “event” which provides the time a specific question is asked and therefore allows us to construct various measures of interview length at the module, individual, and household levels. We provide duration estimates for each module per country as well as an estimate of average total time spent in the household, which ranges from 82 minutes in Cambodia to 120 minutes in Tanzania. The food consumption module is the longest module, on average, ranging from 22 to 26 minutes, depending on the country. Additional high duration household modules include non-food consumption, housing, and household roster. Although not done in this paper, one could potentially conduct an analysis at the question level to find ways to make the module more efficient in terms of time and the amount of information the module extracts.

For survey practitioners interested administering individual questionnaires to adult household members, we estimate that the additional time spent on individual data collection for all adult household members in a given household ranges from 37 to 48 minutes in Cambodia, 22 to 44 minutes in Ethiopia, and 81 to 191 minutes in Tanzania. These numbers do depend on how many modules are administered per person which explain why Tanzania has a higher additional duration compared to others given its higher number of individual modules administered. However, the individual questionnaire, on average, only takes 13 to 25 minutes to administer to each adult, depending on the country. The top time-consuming individual questionnaire modules include land, labor, health, and education.

Furthermore, combining the paradata with the total survey budgets allows us to provide estimates of each minute of survey data collection. For instance, the unit cost estimate is $1.71 in Ethiopia, 28