Necessity of data quality assessment before drawing policy implication on large-scale survey

Data quality is an important issue with all data, be they observational records, survey data or specific checklists. There is a universal requirement by many governments around the world for data to be high quality and be better documented. Maintaining good quality of data is always a challenge in any survey. Therefore, the broad objective of the present study is to assess the quality of data in terms of misreporting and to understand the internal consistency using National Family Health Survey and District Level Household and Facility Survey. For this study, we have selected six states like Utter Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, West Bengal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Age accuracy will be measured by different methods such as Whipple’s Index, Myer’s Index, U. N. Joint Score, and Pullum Method. To check the quality of data the selected indicators are age reporting, women’s education, maternal health information (Contraception use, visit of ANC and other routine checkup, menstruation). Results indicate age misreporting in all the states and inconsistency is obtained for reporting of ANC visits and problem related to menstruation. Quality differs considerably by states. In terms of respondent’s characteristics, literacy comes out to be the highly influencing factor in reporting accurately.