The field visit to Tirupur was instrumental in identifying some of the logistical challenges of implementing a survey with migrant garment workers. First, since employees work 6 days a week and are often at the factory for 10-11 hours a day, it is challenging to find a time when they are available to speak with survey enumerators. During my field visit, I was able to interview the largest number of workers on Sunday when they had time off. Second, finding survey enumerators who are fluent in the native language of the migrant workers may also prove to be a challenge. I am planning to partner with J-PAL South Asia to implement the survey as they have a trusted network of well-trained and experienced survey enumerators in Tamil Nadu. However, most of the enumerators belong to Tamil Nadu and speak Tamil, whereas the migrant workers speak Hindi, Bengali and Odia.
I’ve been working with the J-PAL Research Operations team to brainstorm ways around these two challenges. One option we are considering is to send survey enumerators in two shifts – in the morning before people leave for work, and in the evening once they have returned. We will also plan to survey more people on the weekend, and give enumerators a day off during the week instead. We also discussed the possibility of recruiting survey enumerators belonging to the migrant community in Tirupur, since respondents may feel more comfortable speaking to people from their own state and language barriers are less likely to be a problem. Since many of the SAVE field staff live in the same neighborhoods as the migrant garment workers, we will work with them to identify people who might be interested in working as enumerators. We will make sure to spend a lot of time carefully training the enumerators in survey implementation and informed consent procedures.
After my field visit, I made changes to my survey implementation plan and questionnaire and submitted these changes to IRB for approval. While Harvard IRB approved the changes relatively quickly, approval is required from a local Institutional Review Board as well. This is to ensure that reviewers who are familiar with the local context can confirm that the research procedures do not violate the rights and welfare of research participants. Typically, J-PAL projects are reviewed by the institutional review board at the Institute for Financial Management and Research. The Institutional Review Board at IFMR was recently re-constituted and there has been a long back-log of projects for them to review, so I haven’t received approval to launch the surveys yet. Although I was hoping to start surveying in August, it seems more likely that they will begin in mid-September. Since I’m not teaching this year, I will remain in India for a bit longer so I can oversee the survey implementation. Looking forward to launching soon!
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