There are various things, elements that goes in
maintaining quality. One is that we have a consistent
set of tools. Every year we have common things.
The core of ASER is learning and we add some new
things.
In terms of data consistency we have similar checks
every year on the data. Sampling decisions are taken
centrally. It is the citizen’s efforts so;
there are a huge number of volunteers involved.
Approximately
about 20,000 volunteers were involved in this.
The survey is done by the volunteers, but the
training we do. So we have master trainers in
every state. They go out and train the volunteers.
The volunteers fill out the form that is send
to states. We have about 8- 10 data centers. Because
there is so much data, and we want to report out
so fast, no one place can handle it.
The data is entered across the country in different
places and then sent to a central location, which
is then put together. All the data is processed
in Delhi, so that is centralised.
At each step we have a lot of checks and measures.
In fact this year we also did a recheck. So our
master trainers after the survey was over, we
asked them to go back to four villages to recheck.
Volunteers do the survey and we never had an issue
with them. But the whole thing about volunteers
is, they are very enthusiastic, we are not paying
people to do the survey. But even then we go back
to do random checks whether the survey was done.
We have done now random checks at the data entering
centers because even at the data entry level we
give instructions about checking the data, while
its been inputted. There again there are checks
being done.
