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Transparency and accountability on the part of investigators and participants are critical to the integrity of the resulting assessment. To ensure transparency, investigators must be diligent in citing references for all data and information used in the assessment. In the case of key interviews where interviewee anonymity must be preserved, the investigator must, at a minimum, identify the “category” of interlocutor and the date and location of the interview. Moreover, the methodology used by the investigator must be clearly stated so that those using the assessment as a basis for political decisions can see clearly how the investigators arrived at their conclusions.
To ensure frank and full disclosure of information by interviewees, they should be reassured that the information they provide will not be ascribed specifically to them.
Generalizing beyond the data is a frequent methodological error. When a small study finds excess mortality or malnutrition among children, there can be a desire to extrapolate the narrow findings to the larger population and to liberally estimate the total number of children thus affected in the country. This is a convenient way for others to misrepresent information in the report, claiming that “a scientific study has proven” such projections to be accurate and forgetting the caveats or limitations stated by the authors. It is best to say that, “It cannot be determined with the information at hand how many children have died, but the evidence, in one study, suggests that the rate has increased.” This is the single most important way to reduce misrepresentation.
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