Asia-Pacific Stats Café Series: Survey design: Are we asking what we think we're asking?

Ms. Beaven has over thirty years of experience in government statistics, in particular data preparation and analysis.  She has also worked extensively with governments, multilateral agencies and the statistical community, most notably through the United Nations Statistics Division, ECA, ESCAP, World Bank and Paris21.

Prior to joining SD, Ms. Beaven led the Data for Development Team at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office of the United Kingdom, where she managed a global portfolio of statistical programmes to build core statistics as well as helped countries modernize their statistical systems.  She was also a leading advocate for financing for data and statistics.

Ms. Beaven has provided a wide range of technical support, from improving economic and financial statistics to estimating local population using geospatial data.  She is one of the founders of the Inclusive Data Charter, launched at the 2018 High-Level Political Forum, to mobilize political commitments and to advance inclusive and disaggregated data.  Ms. Beaven also led a programme on monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals with United Nations Statistics Division and established a data science hub with the Office for National Statistics of the United Kingdom to explore use of data science, in particular geospatial as well as big data, to monitor progress.

Ms. Beaven holds Master’s degrees in Statistical Applications in Business and Government as well as Business Administration, and a Bachelor’s degree in Geography and Geology.

Afsaneh Yazdani is a Statistician at ESCAP Statistics Division, Population and Social Statistics Section. She is currently leading a regional initiative on data integration. Before joining ESCAP in 2018, Afsaneh worked in various capacities at the Statistical Centre of Iran for more than 20 years. Afsaneh has extensive experience in official statistics with a focus on survey methodology, censuses, and register-based statistics.

Richard Ssewakiryanga is a Senior Research Fellow and Adviser for Policy Research and Strategic Partnership at the Center for Basic Research - a leading academic, basic and policy research center in Kampala. Prior to joining the center, he was the Executive Director of the Uganda National NGO Forum - a national platform organization for NGOs in Uganda for 11 years and Executive Director of MS Training Center for Development Cooperation in Arusha, Tanzania.  During 2021, Richard led a local team that worked with the ILO to test labour force survey questions and concepts through 80 cognitive interviews and several focus groups.

Neetha N is Professor at the Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS), New Delhi. Her work focuses on the analysis of women’s employment, issues of women workers in the informal sector, domestic workers, unpaid care work and labour migration. She was part of the Indian team for the UNIRISD study, Political and Social Economy of Care. She is one of the Lead Authors of the chapter on Pluralising Family of the International Panel on Social Progress Report, 2018.

Jessica joined the ILO in April 2021 to support the review of informality statistics standards through the Engendering Informality Statistics Project – a joint ILO and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation initiative. She specialises in gender statistics and has worked with many national statistical systems to increase capacity for better data production and its use for action.

Samantha joined the ILO in June 2020. She is working with ILO colleagues, national statistics offices, and specialised research institutes to develop new tools and guidance for the regular production of statistics on unpaid domestic and care work, under the Data 2X funded modular time use project. Her prior research focussed on rural livelihoods, labour migration, and gendered divisions of time and labour, with a strong methodological slant.

A key member of the ILO Global Technical Team in Statistics, Peter provides support to the countries of South Asia to adopt international statistical standards and develop capacity for measuring the world of work. He joined the ILO in 2019 after a long and successful career with Statistics South Africa and is based in the ILO Regional Office in New Delhi.

A key member of the ILO Global Technical Team in Statistics, Peter provides support to the countries of South Asia to adopt international statistical standards and develop capacity for measuring the world of work. He joined the ILO in 2019 after a long and successful career with Statistics South Africa and is based in the ILO Regional Office in New Delhi.