An Education Needs Assessment of CARIFORUM Firms

These revisions mostly included wording changes, the removal and addition of survey response

options for efficiently and effectively gathering data across a number of questions, and other

grammatical corrections. A major revision involved the translation of the instrument into several

languages including English, Spanish and French for countries in which those languages were

dominant.

Once these revisions were completed, an online preparatory (pre-data collection) training session

was designed and executed with several representatives of BSOs who were chosen from the several

countries to successfully aid them in the administration of the online survey with their business

members. This three-hour training session allowed these BSOs to fully review and navigate all

sections and questions of the survey tool and effectively understand the wider data-gathering

experience. During the training, these representatives were guided to offer any additional

queries/questions regarding the administration of the survey and the best ways to engage business

respondents virtually or over the phone when conducting the survey interviews. All participants

expressed a clarity of understanding during this training session and all queries were adequately

addressed by the end of the session. Subsequent to the completion of training (during the same

week), BSOs were given, via email, a copy of a Guidance and Training Manual for Survey

Interviewing of the Data-Gathering Tool (Annex 5) to support the successful administration and

execution of survey interviews with business members in their country. This Manual provided the

core reinforcement of key concepts, techniques and practices (captured in the training) to secure

the highest quality of data-gathering in the field. Given the training was recorded, a copy of this

recording was also shared with both attendees and non-attendees of the training session.

Once the survey instrument was finalised after training, all BSOs received a copy of the survey

link (representative of their country of affiliation) to be dispensed to all of their business members

in the country. All BSOs were also guided that they may have to conduct interviews with their

members to increase the uptake of the survey responses over the period. Each BSO in a given

country was also provided with daily and weekly updates on the number of successfully completed

surveys to help them to continually track the progress of the survey uptake. The data-collection

process was envisaged to last for at least 2 weeks from the completion of training but was extended

by at least a further two weeks based on sluggish responses in certain countries.

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