Five questions to consider when conducting COVID-19 phone research
Shreya Menon, Petra Sonderegger, Swetha Totapally · BMJ Global Health · 2021
### Summary box The shift in research modality to phone surveys during the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted tensions between the need for real-time data on the one hand and high-quality, generalisable data on the other. We present five questions for evaluating the trade-offs involved when navigating this shift (figure 1). We draw on prior research, our participation in the COVID-19 Research Network (CORE Net), and the range of phone research conducted by CORE Net from April to November 2020. The latter included four surveys across India on a range of topics and targeting diverse beneficiary populations. The largest of these was our survey from April-June 2020 to assess the efficacy of COVID-19-related governmententitlements across 47 000 low-income households in India. We also conducted asurvey of 17 000 women and men on the gendered impacts of Covid-19 fromOctober-November 2020, results of which are forthcoming. Additional CORE Netstudies referenced in this commentary include an ongoing study from April 2020by IDInsight on COVID-19 knowledge, behaviour change, and economic effects, aswell as a study from …