<mark>statistical offices in each country, and then compiled, processed, and harmonized.</mark><sup>13</sup> <mark>The data are nationally representative, and hence represent the demographics of the entire country. Since our survey targeted individuals and not households, we use the individual surveys from GMD for comparison. While the GMD survey years do not match our Internet survey years in all countries, they are not older than the online surveys by more than a few years. Since demographic characteristics, such as age and gender are unlikely to vary within a few years, the GMD is a valid comparison.</mark><sup>14</sup> <mark>Specifically, we used the GMD survey from Brazil in 2019, Egypt in 2015, Indonesia in 2018, Kenya in 2015, Sri Lanka in 2016, and Türkiye in 2018.</mark><sup>15</sup> <mark>The details are presented in panel B in table 3.1.</mark> <mark>Third, we compare labor market indicators from the online survey with probabilistic samplebased surveys through the pandemic depending on their availability. In Brazil, we use the National Household Sample Survey – PNAD, a nationally representative survey of 193,000 households per month, conducted during the pandemic in December 2020 and May/June 2021. In Indonesia, we use the labor force surveys conducted in August 2020 and February 2021, each comprising 793,542 and 203,464 households respectively. In Kenya, we use the Kenya Continuous Household Survey comprising 11,997 households conducted in the last quarter of 2020 (October to December 2020). We use labor force indicators from the fourth quarter of 2020’s Quarterly Report of the Sri Lanka Labor Force Survey covering up to 25,750 households, and from the Türkiye Household labor force survey covering 58,560 households for each quarter.</mark><sup>16</sup> <mark>The comparative data are drawn based on whether data are available in the same month as an online survey wave, or within one month before or after. The exception is Türkiye for which the comparative household labor force surveys are conducted two months prior to wave3 of the online survey. The details are presented in panel C in table 3.1.</mark><sup>17</sup>

# **<mark>3.2.  Data Description and Patterns</mark>**

Are the demographics represented in the online data nationally representative, or do they oversample or under-sample specific demographic groups? The answer to this question will indicate whether and how we can use the survey data to make broader conclusions, or if other adjustments will be required in order for them to be nationally representative. We compare the online survey’s wave-2 data with the GMD, and with the Internet-using population from the GMD if Internet usage data are available in that country.<sup>18</sup> The comparison with GMD relies on the assumption that the slightly dated GMD reflects the demographics at the time of the online survey accurately. Indeed, the pandemic itself could

> 13 <mark>The process of compiling the GMD is coordinated by the Data for Goals (D4G) team and supported by the six regional statistics teams in the Poverty and Equity Global Practice.</mark>

> 14 Admittedly, educational attainment might change drastically within a few years, and there have been instances of this in the past (for example, literacy rate changed from 53% in 2014 to 89% in 2019 in Côte d’Ivoire), but these types of drastic changes are minimal in the countries and period we study. For example, Brazil’s illiteracy rate among adults remained somewhat stable at 7.95% in 2015 and 6.8% in 2018; Indonesia’s adult illiteracy rate changed from 7.9% in 2015 to 8.55% in 2020; Sri Lanka’s illiteracy rate changed from 10.5% in 2016 to 7.9% in 2019 ( <mark>UNESCO Institute of Statistics,</mark> 2020).

15 The GMD was also available in Egypt in 2019, but the variable pertaining to Internet usage is only available in the 2015 survey. 16 For Sri Lanka, see http://www.statistics.gov.lk/LabourForce/StaticalInformation/QuarterlyReports/4thQuarter2020 (last accessed December 4, 2021); For <mark>Türkiye</mark> , see https://www.tuik.gov.tr/ (last accessed December 4, 2021).

> 17 Egypt is the only country for which we are unable to find labor force survey data in the same time frame as our online surveys were conducted.

> 18 <mark>We present all the demographic variables from the online data across waves in appendix figures A.4.1 to A.4.6. The figures indicate that the demographics captured by the online survey data are stable across different waves. Therefore, to make comparisons with GMD, we could potentially use any of the online survey waves. We use the median-wave, wave-2, for comparisons.</mark>

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