Take Two
Published by SuperAdminMICRODIS
MICRODIS - Take Two
February 1, 2008 - January 31, 2009
The second year of the MICRODIS Project put many of the conceptual tools developed in the first year into practical application. The year commenced with the First Annual Meeting in Delhi, India from February 17- 19, 2008. This event included important discussions on the achievements and challenges of each partner in the first year, along with planning for the up-coming project field work.
During the Annual Meeting, each Country Team presented 2-3 suggested survey sites in their countries for consideration of the thematic groups. These presentations included a contextual report on the area, disaster profile for the site and its overall relevance to the thematic areas and objectives of the project. Afterwards, thematic groups met to vote on the sites that they saw as most relevant to their discipline and research focus. These votes were presented and discussed in the plenary, and finalized in the months to follow by the Country Teams. A Steering Committee meeting then took place after the closing ceremonies to discuss crucial project issues.
Following the Annual Meeting, the Official MICRODIS Launch was hosted and organized by the Voluntary Health Association of India on February 21, 2008. Along with the MICRODIS partners, many different political representatives, academics, NGOs and respected dignitaries from all over the world were represented. Press sessions were held and various presentations were given, followed by a half day Workshop on Integration of Thematic Conceptual Models organized by University of Greenwich. The workshop addressed different issues of integration, including the use of the Pressure and Release (PAR) Model as a framework for integrating conceptual models and how to integrate the questionnaires.
The Consortium then enthusiastically began the preparations for their empirical studies. This included finalizing the tools and methods for each survey site. The Health, Social and Economic Working Groups worked diligently and meticulously to develop two different questionnaires for the use of the project. Firstly, each group came up with an exhaustive questionnaire tool that would assess the impacts for their given group in situations of floods, earthquakes and windstorms.
The first order of business was selecting the main questions out of this large document to create a Thematic Core Questionnaire for each Working Group. Intensive discussions and revisions were made by each group to develop these tools. Simultaneously, the MICRODIS Core questionnaire was being developed by the Integration Working Group, which would include the consent form, and demographic and general information that each group would need to know about its respondents. The MICRODIS Core was then combined with each of the Thematic Cores to be used in every MICRODIS household survey. Thus, the MICRODIS integrated protocol was developed as a foundational document for each Country Team to then adapt to their cultural- and research-specific contexts.
Some of the development and revision of tools was facilitated at the Training Workshop for Survey Coordinators in Hanoi, Vietnam from May 19-23, 2008. This workshop was designed for the Principal Investigators of each survey site, and included a focus on methodologies and questionnaire development for the MICRODIS project. The Workshop was divided into two qualitative days, where participants were given information about how to carry out Focus Group Discussions, Key Informant Interviews, Community Mapping and other Participatory Rapid Appraisal tools; and two quantitative days focused on data collection and methodologies, household questionnaire development, sample calculations, standardized coding and definitions, and data analysis. Working groups and mixed thematic groups met to discuss various Thematic Core proposals, in order to gain different perspectives on focus and overlap amongst questionnaires. Finally, there was an Epi Info software session, where participants worked with the MICRODIS Core questionnaire document to create for themselves the questionnaire data entry forms using this software.
Now that the MICRODIS and Thematic Cores were completed, the remainder of the original expansive questionnaire document were then revised to produce a secondary tool: the Thematic Extended Questionnaires. These are helpful tools for each survey site when Country Teams go into more detail about a specific area of focus for their research (i.e. Nutrition, Migration, etc.). In addition to the Thematic Core and MICRODIS Core documents, the teams will then be able to pick and chose, with the advice of thematic experts, the most applicable and appropriate questions from the Thematic Extended Questionnaires. The IWG went through the thematic and extended questionnaires to eliminate overlap, standardize format and coding, and suggest improvements on where the tools could be more effective. These revisions were discussed with each working group and the entire consortium before being finalized into a final generic model for the integrated field protocol.
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1.MICRODIS CORE
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2.SOCIAL THEMATIC CORE
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3.HEALTH THEMATIC
CORE
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4.ECONOMIC THEMATIC CORE
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ISSUE OF FOCUS: Migration, Nutrition, Mental Health, etc.
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SOCIAL EXTENDED*
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HEALTH EXTENDED*
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ECONOMIC EXTENDED*
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Based on their sites, the Country Teams each developed a survey design and sampling calculation. This includes information on the site, areas of research focus, number of households to be interviewed, how many focus group discussions and key informant interviews to take place, survey budget, training of interviewers and data entry staff, planning the pilot study and the adaptation of the questionnaires. Each country team was/is responsible for adapting the integrated field protocol and their chosen extended questions for their specific site, which will then be translated and back-translated to ensure the significance of the wording in the questions is not lost or ambiguous. Country teams also submitted contextual information on their sites combined to produce the Contextual Report document of the MICRODIS sites.
In the second year, successful and efficient field studies with the MICRODIS questionnaire tools were completed in Bahraich and Orissa, India (UoD and VHAI, respectively); Tewkesbury, United Kingdom (UoN); Bojonegoro, Indonesia (UoI); and, Albay and Southern Leyte, Philippines (CDRC and XU, respectively). Various revisions of the tools were the result of a collaborative effort of both the Country Teams and the consortium thematic experts. Data collected in these studies (varying from November to January in their implementation) is currently being entered, cleaned and analyzed. Presentations of the field work and preliminary results will be made at the Second Annual Meeting in Brussels, Belgium on February 25-27, 2009. Preparations for this meeting began in the latter part of year two.
Along with the field work preparations, other achievements have already been recorded for year two. A Review Report on existing disaster related university courses was created. The literature review from the Economic Working Group and the revised literature review from the Health Working Group were also completed. A new version of the MICRODIS website has been created, with a public and a private domain (www.microdis-eu.be). The pubic site gives information about the project, progress in the first year, partner information (including maps where partners can be located), project flyers (in five different languages) and PowerPoint presentation, and contact information for the coordination team. A new portion on survey information has been added with the contextual information for each site, timelines for work done by each team, and a map to locate each survey. The Secure Network Zone is a place for partners to access and distribute documents, information on courses and conferences, details on meetings and other relevant events in the project.
MICRODIS partners were able to attend many different conferences and training events in the second year. These included the COP14 United Nations Climate Change Conference in December 2008, where two members of the consortium presented the MICRODIS project at a European Commission side event on current research on the Health Impacts of Climate Change. Other events included Economics Valuation of Environmental and Natural Resources conference in Hanoi, Vietnam; Risk management and geography in Savoie, France; and National Forum for Environment and Health Research in Liceo de Cagayan, Philippines; to mention a few.The Assessing Public Health in Emergency Situations (APHES) Summer Course was held in Brussels, Belgium on July 7-18, 2008. The course was attended and successfully completed by representatives of six different consortium partners. Scholarships were given for the participation in this course and other training activities. Other courses and lectures were given by the consortium members throughout the second year, contributing useful learning opportunities for the academic and international disaster community.