Survey design as lockdown rules change

Posted by Steve Guilbert

By Tim Wilkinson

This month we have been working on designing a questionnaire survey for food businesses. Our survey is exploring the impacts of Covid-19 restrictions and the strategies businesses have implemented in response. It has been challenging designing a survey that will capture the multiple and varied impacts of Covid on business operations, and which addresses the different phases of the lockdown restrictions, which have shaped the type and degree of those impacts. As with nearly all aspects of life at the moment, the process of survey design has been one of adjusting to new Covid restrictions – to make sure the survey works in a variety of lockdown contexts. We discussed a draft of the questionnaire with our Expert Panel last week, and we are currently working with their feedback to develop the survey. We will launch the survey, online, in November.

We are going to be seeking respondents from a range of businesses from different food sectors (e.g. fruit and vegetables, meat, dairy etc.) and from different stages of the supply chain. Having created a sampling frame, after much discussion, we decided to focus on several stages of the food supply chain – but not all. We are focussing on transporters of primary products, food processors, manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers and distributors. We have chosen not to cover primary producers, hospitality or retailers in the survey – although they are important parts of the food system. This was partly because it was so challenging to write robust questions that individual businesses from across the whole food system could answer in a standard way. But also because there are excellent secondary data sources from market research, particularly for retail and hospitality. We will be exploring the impacts of Covid-19 on primary producers in our Centre for Rural Policy Research South West Farm Survey 2020, which we launched this month. We are also investigating the possibility of running a survey of tourism and hospitality businesses in the South West early next year to gather data on this sector.

As part of our background work in this part of the project, we reviewed existing surveys that look at the impacts of Covid-19 on businesses. There are, of course, a number of surveys doing this. We found 16, but not all were exclusively about food businesses (they covered a range of industries). Some surveys focussed on only one stage in the food supply chain (for example, only covering manufacturers or food processors). Other surveys only looked at businesses in one particular UK region or had geographical foci abroad. It is worth checking out the Office of National Statistics (ONS) Business Impact of Coronavirus Survey, which has tracked changes to business turnover, workforce, prices, trade and resilience every two weeks since 9th March. The ONS data set includes all industries, although some separate data are available for food and beverage importers and exporters.

Despite identifying a wide range of Covid-19 impact surveys, we found that a cross-sectoral look at the impacts of Covid-19 on food business specifically, both during and after the national lockdown in the UK, has not been made. In such a rapidly changing situation, we are discussing the possibility of repeating the survey at some point next year. However, we will use the data we collect in November to understand the food chain responses to shocks in 2020. We will be exploring our key findings in interviews with businesses in order to understand more of the story behind the incredible shifts in business practice. The outcomes of the research will be available to inform policy on food business resilience and preparedness for future shocks to the supply chain and food system.