SIB Launches Training for Multi-Indicator Cluster Survey with UNICEF Partnership

Today, the Statistical Institute of Belize launched a training session for surveyors and field staff who will conduct the seventh Multi-Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS). The global survey, held in collaboration with UNICEF, seeks to collect in-depth information not captured in the population and housing census. Over forty participants will be trained in conducting interviews, using the MICs software, and working with GPS data for the survey. Diana Castillo-Trejo, Director General of the Statistical Institute of Belize, provided details on the exercise and its purpose.

Diana Castillo Trejo, Director General, SIB: “It’s a very intense training, so we are planning on four and a half weeks of training after which we are going directly into data collection for 12 weeks. This is the fourth round of the mix that we are conducting here in Belize and it is the largest and the most ambitious iteration of that survey for us here in Belize. The sample size is somewhere around 5,500 households. We are including various questionnaires for women, children and men. We are introducing some innovations such as the geo-referencing of mixed data to household locations. We haven’t done this for any prior round of the mix. And we’re also introducing the direct interviewing of children for the first time in the mix. So the mix delves much deeper into aspects of health and well-being, of women, children, and men, as well as of the last mix. It goes much deeper than the census does. And it is, yes, as you said the second largest data collection exercise, it’s the second most costly because it is so detailed and so complex and so large. So there are indicators here. We expect to have over 100 indicators coming out of the mix survey. Forty of those are SDG indicators that are required for monitoring our progress towards the global SDG goals.”

Allison Parker, UNICEF Representative for Belize, says the survey the survey’s data will be used to craft policies and interventions to address areas of need identified.

Allison Parker, UNICEF Representative, Belize: “And this covers every component of human development that relates to children, especially children under five. So we look at indicators that speak to the health, the nutrition, the well-being, the educational standards, access to services, child protection issues, issues regarding poverty levels, issues regarding children who are migrants, issues with disability. And so there’s a gamut of issues that are actually covered with each of the mixed processes that has been done. And that’s where we have the core data for children in many countries across the world. And it is a unicef-supported initiative and it’s been implemented in over a hundred countries globally. So one of the issues we’ve been able to cover for this one is to looking at violence against children. That wasn’t necessarily captured before. So this is a very unique piece of work and we are looking at how do we capture that information and that data because we can see that a lot of that is being covered in the news already. Another key element that we are looking at this year is mental health. We have not been able to capture issues of mental health before. So even though we speak about mental health, and COVID sort of exacerbated that a bit, so that we are able to understand what’s happening. It was a taboo before, nobody spoke about mental health. So now we are able to talk about mental health especially among children and adolescents. So these are sort of core areas that are sort of new. We are looking at water quality for the very first time. So before we were looking at just access to water but now we are looking at, okay when I have access to water what is the quality of the water that we are utilizing? And so there’s a specific module that is actually looking at each and every one of those.”

The data from the MICS will be published in 2025.