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Implement Secondary Data Review

How will you do it?

Whether in the aftermath of a sudden onset or during a protracted crisis, a large amount of existing data is usually availableNational governments, UN agencies, as well as organizations specialized in assessment continuously collect large amounts of data. This data, collected by actors such as national governments, NGOs, UN agencies, development organizations, etc., which is not directly collected by or on behalf of the WASH coordination platform, is called secondary data.

Secondary data is often challenging to analyze and process because of their its overwhelming amount, uneven quality and incomplete coverage. To make sense out of existing secondary data, you need to implement a Secondary Data Review (SDR), which is defined as must be implemented. An SDR is “a rigorous process of data collation, synthesis and analysis building on a desk study of all relevant data available available” (ACAPS 2014)”.

The objective objectives of a SDR is are two-fold. At the early stage of a sudden onset crisis, the SDR helps you inform informing the initial response and feeding planning documents HPC outputs such as the Flash Appeal's Situational Analysis and Flash Appeal. Furthermore. At a later stage, the SDR helps you identifying information gaps that need to be addressed and designing adequately primary data collection, including methodology, indicators and coverage.Throughout the crisis, the SDR should continue on a regular basis. It will either remain your most important source of data, or complement any primary data you collect to inform the response and feed key planning documents (HNO, HRP, Cluster Strategy, etc.). For this reason, the .

The SDR should be considered as a continuous and iterative process rather than a one-off activity. For more comprehensive guidance, please refer to ACAPS’ technical brief (2014) in the Key guidance and tools section.A SDR generally follows those steps: the initial SDR should be updated on a regular basis throughout the response to complement primary data collection and inform the Humanitarian Needs Overview.

The steps to implement a SDR are as follows:

Collect existing

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secondary data

Locate, track and compile relevant pieces of information (reports, maps, datasets, etc.) into a shared folder on a platform such as Dropbox or Google Drive. Do not restrain yourself to WASH-specific information and include any relevant data from other key sectors (nutrition, health, etc.) as defined in your assessment strategy. For a list of potential sources of information, see the GWC list of key WASH data sources in the Key guidance and tools section.

Create

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a secondary data registry

Read the sources (this can be done by a team of people), enter relevant information into your SDR tool and tag the information accordingly. Compile entered data into a single database. Clean the compiled secondary data to ensure data has been entered and tagged correctly.

Analyse secondary data and identify information gap

Analyse the secondary data according to your pre-defined tags and analysis questions. Identify gaps where no assessment has taken place yet, or only incomplete ones.

Share Secondary Data Review findings

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The compilation is a continuous and often collective process: strong data management procedures need to be set up. A SDR registry is a useful tool that will help organizing the information you collate. The registry is usually an Excel database (see the 2016 GWC WASH SDR Templates in the Key guidance and tools section) where you can classify the information based on different criteria.

Identify information gaps

Go through the secondary data and identify information/data gaps in terms of availability, quality, representativeness, stratification, geographical coverage, etc. comparing what is available with the requirements set in the assessment strategy. This will help understanding what primary data should be collected.