The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) and Unicef have jointly launched the seventh Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) 2024-2025, focusing on children and women.
The launching ceremony was held at the BBS Auditorium, Parishankhyan Bhaban, in Dhaka on Tuesday.
State Minister for Ministry of Planning Md Shahiduzzaman Sarker, Secretary of Statistics and Information Division Dr Shahnaz Arefin, Unicef Representative in Bangladesh Sheldon Yett, and BBS Director General Mohammed Mizanur Rahman were present at the event.
Md Shahiduzzaman Sarker said: “I will request the survey conductors to ensure the expertise of the data collectors to avoid data discrepancy. We are the citizens of Bangladesh, we also are the citizens of the world. We have to collect information to take the world forward.”
“Bangladesh is a model for steep progress to achieve SDG, especially when it comes to women and children,” said Sheldon Yett.
Bangladesh will collect data for 200 indicators through this survey. For the first time, new indicators such as lead levels and micronutrients in blood and anaemia have been introduced in the survey.
A BBS official said the project's budget is estimated to be around Tk15 crore.
According to the BBS, MICS data are valuable, so they expect to reuse them in other analyses. The BBS is also planning to run a project called MICS+ in the future for telephone surveys.
It also plans to make policy briefs and snapshots to easily glance at the data for future use.
The agency expects that this survey will help implement Bangladesh's 9th Five Year Plan (FYP).
To ensure the quality of data, the BBS and the icddr,b (International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh) will run an analysis on the same sample to compare the results before publishing. Unicef and the BBS will finalize the survey module together, and trained professionals will collect data for measurement accuracy.
To provide quality assurance, the BBS is planning to receive MICS technical assistance from global and national teams. Monitoring teams will also ensure spot checks within the first week. To reduce non-response, collectors will also make three repeated visits to a household. The supervisor of a team will also re-interview at least one household per cluster in a day.
The survey requires at least four months of fieldwork. Each field will consist of five enumerators, one measurer and one supervisor from the BBS.
The BBS will conduct one month of residential training for 250 data collectors. The training will consist of lectures, group work and evening sessions. They will also provide extra evening tests for enumerators who are falling behind. Trainers in the program will also go through a 20-day training session with international trainers.
The enumerators will carry a tablet to fill in the data. The data will be sent to the supervisor and upon review the data will be sent to the central office server. The process will allow them to view and run field check tables on data in real-time.
The BBS says this field check table is a great tool for data monitoring and quality control.
Secretary Dr Shahnaz Arefin said: “Children are the future of the country, thus we need to look after them. Though there are many limitations that we tackle, we did not have a limitation in our efforts.”
This is the first MICS with geocoded latitude and longitude, which will pinpoint the location of the data for further analysis.
BBS chief Mohammed Mizanur Rahman said the agency is providing regular data for 115 out of 231 indicators of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG).
Key findings of the survey will be published by June 2025, and the dissemination is expected to be completed by November 2025.
The previous version of MICS was held in 2019, where 130 countries participated, and Bangladesh was surveyed on 144 different indicators. Bangladesh has been participating in MICS since its first round in 1993.