Rapid Social Data Collection Tools: Rapid Polling and Rapid Qualitative Research for Polio Outbreak Response

Have you identified an area where data can help you make decisions about appropriate polio communication for development (C4D) strategies in your country?

When meeting the need to collect data about the social and behavioural context of infection and vaccination, polio outbreak response teams face challenges such as the impracticality and expense of performing a full research study in an outbreak context. In such cases, rapid research approaches may represent a more viable option. From the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), this guide provides guidance and practical tools for use by teams in polio outbreak contexts to conduct rapid research to strengthen communication for development (C4D) in polio outbreaks. It includes adaptable data collection tools for rapid polling and rapid qualitative research.

Specifically, following an introductory section, the resource includes templates for:

• Rapid polling: Particularly after the emergence of COVID-19, telephone-based surveys have increasingly replaced traditional face-to-face surveys for collecting quantitative data in many aid and development programmes. The tool is modular, featuring rapid polling questions that can be included or removed from the data collection tool as per the specific needs of the survey. The questions are simple, and the overall length is short to facilitate ease of use and interpretation. The template will need to be adapted for the outbreak response and the local cultural context. Sample question: Will you vaccinate your children against polio the next time the vaccine is offered? If not, why not?
• Rapid qualitative research: This is a structured means of hearing the thoughts of caregivers and frontline workers, where the emphasis is on completing the research quickly rather than the usual attention to methodological rigor. That is to say, the process is to develop a data collection tool, find the most appropriate people to travel to communities and talk to them using interviews or focus group discussions (FGDs), and then to relay these conversations to those responsible for C4D planning. This feedback can be used to inform C4D strategies prior to the start of any outbreak response and/or as a way of understanding ongoing challenges, if multiple polio campaigns are needed to close an outbreak. It can provide an indication of perceptions of oral polio vaccine (OPV) and polio campaigns in a given community, the messages and communications channels that are most likely to reach and to resonate with a community, and social norms around polio vaccination. Separate tools are presented for:
  • General research with caregivers, which can be tailored to the areas of greatest interest for a particular outbreak response (Sample question: What is the correct process we should use if we wanted to engage community members to request that the community accepts polio vaccination?);
  • More focused research with caregivers who are refusing to allow vaccination teams to vaccinate children against polio (Sample question: Can you please tell me in more detail what it is about the vaccine that is not acceptable to your religious beliefs?); and
  • Research with frontline workers (Sample question: Are there any people or groups that you think the polio programme should talk to in order to help persuade people in the community about vaccination?).

The methods described here can also be used for qualitative research necessary to respond to clusters of missed children.