Survey Instrument: measuring the impact of COVID-19 on low-income communities, Wave 3 - Small Businesses

In order to conduct a rapid assessment of the impact of COVID-19 on low-income populations globally, BFA Global deployed a series of “dipstick” online surveys, across three countries. You can find the dashboard containing insights from the survey here. We are also open sourcing the survey instrument in both English and Spanish.

This instrument is from Wave 3 of our surveys, and consists of 50 questions evaluating impact on small businesses in Mexico, Vietnam and Zambia.

Virtually all these questions have been tested across multiple geographies over time and generally yield good data. Nevertheless, do deliberately localize for references to specific financial instruments, informal groups, social practices, etc.

You are free to mix and match as you wish, but we do ask that you consider sharing the summary results with us, especially if you deploy questions verbatim, or close to. This will allow us to triangulate across many more population segments than what we would be able to do alone. For much shorter surveys over SMS, a chatbot, or other cases where a lean research approach is necessary, we would recommend picking up to ten from this list. We have our favorites for a few different situations – do feel free to reach out if you’d like to discuss.

The development of this survey was made possible through the generous support of the Metlife Foundation and FSD Zambia.