With the introduction of social distancing measures, lockdowns and mobility restrictions across the globe, and in an effort to protect the health and safety of respondents and survey staff, the MICS programme developed recommendations to all participating countries, to (a) temporarily suspend all field activities, (b) assess whether any ongoing fieldwork can be considered complete and if so, move to data processing, (c) convert all activities that normally involve face-to-face interaction and travel to take place on an online basis, (d) accelerate data processing, analysis and report writing activities wherever feasible.
There were 7 surveys where fieldwork was in progress when the restrictions were imposed. Of these surveys, 5 have now been considered complete and have moved to data processing, as very few households/clusters were left to complete and/or the completed households/clusters were assessed to be viable for reporting findings. Fieldwork was paused in 2 countries and will resume once the restrictions are lifted and circumstances are considered conducive to conducting field activities. In all other countries, all survey activities are ongoing and/or are accelerated on an online basis, with the exception of field activities such as questionnaire pretesting and listing.
The chart below shows the current status of all MICS6 surveys. Details on individual surveys can be found here.