Collecting Descriptive Information about COVID-19 in Bangladesh

This project is collecting data on individuals, families, and firms through two types of phone surveys. The first type will collect high priority data from a nationwide sample via random digit dialing. The second type follows up with more in-depth phone-based interviews. Respondents for these in-depth interviews are being drawn from samples in five different prior projects: participants in a visa lottery program jointly operated by the governments of Malaysia and Bangladesh; residents of rural areas selected for a joint government and UNDP project related to dispute resolution; a representative sample of both refugees and members of the host community in Cox’s Bazar; beneficiaries of social transfer programs who use digital financial services to receive payments; and urban laborers and domestic seasonal migrant workers. The team aims to survey at least 8,000 individuals from these samples. Given the geographical coverage of the project populations, the samples drawn for the phone surveys will be nationally representative. The team also plans to conduct phone surveys of firms from two samples: formal businesses in Dhaka and small and medium enterprise (SME) borrowers from BRAC.