As we have learned from the previous class, in order to plan effectively, we should have information about the current situation, problems of interest, etc. Unfortunately in real life the information is often not available, inaccurate, out-of-date, and/or incomplete. This is particularly true for developing countries because of underdeveloped data collection infrastructures and poor surveillance systems. When data is absent, in order to be able to make informed decisions and considering prioritizing, planners need to gather and analyze necessary data prior to planning.

Depending on the type of the data needed, qualitative or quantitative research methods or both can be used. Quantitative research answers to the question "how many" or "how often" (whereas qualitative research provides data, answering to the question "why"). Surveys are widely used in quantitative research. They are important sources of information for health care policy-makers, public health professionals, private providers, and health care consumers concerned with the planning, implementation and/or evaluation of health-related programs and policies.

Surveys systematically collect information on a topic by asking selected individuals questions about a variety of factors that influence, measure, or are affected by people's health in order to generate statistics on the group(s) represented by those individuals.

Any survey has the following key dimensions:

A properly conducted survey can give planners the information they need at moderate cost, and known precision.

For the reasons of time, resources, efficiency and precision, measuring the variable using a sample of the population rather than measuring the whole population (i.e. census) is usually preferred. Survey data are often preferred over census data because a complete enumeration (census) will often suffer from underreporting, the inability to obtain data of the uniformly high quality from a vast army of data gatherers, and errors, delays in processing masses of data.

Thus, surveys

Surveys are done to

In general, any survey consists of the following steps:

1. Choosing a topic for health survey
2. Matching the survey design to survey objectives
3. Defining and clarifying the survey variables
4. Planning the analysis of the survey data
5. Choosing the methods of data collection
6. Drawing the sample
7. Formulating the survey questions
8. Formatting the questionnaire
9. Monitoring and caring out the survey
10. Preparing the data for analysis
11. Implementing the analysis of the survey data
12. Writing the research report

Each of these steps is a topic for separate extensive discussion, which is out of the scope of this introductory course. Therefore we are going to provide you with general information about some key points related to surveys, which we think are important to know for anyone who is involved in the health care planning process.