Introduction:

Once the villages or communities have been selected for the in-community sampling, the surveyors should visit them and aim to find all cases of SAM/MAM.

This follows exactly the same process as in-community sampling for Stage 2 and 3 of a SQUEAC survey.

Contents:

1. In-community case finding
2. Actions on completion of case finding
3. Tools

1. In-community case finding:

Once in the communities, survey teams can use two in-community case finding techniques to locate cases in each village:

• Active and adaptive case finding
• Door-to-door case finding

These are the same techniques which are used in Stage 2 to test the hypothesis. Here is a guide on how to carry out each.

The findings of the interviews with carers of acutely malnourished children and results of the sampling recorded on forms. Templates for these are available in Tools.

2. Actions on completion of case finding:

The survey team should complete the in-community case finding in ALL of the villages and communities which they set out to sample at the start of the in-community case finding stage; even if they reach the required sample size (n) before completing sampling in all villages.

If, during the in-community sampling, the team finds MORE than the required sample size, then this is fine.

However it they do not succeed in finding the required sample size then they have a number of options:

• They can randomly select more villages to sample until they reach the required sample size (as many more as they deem necessary).

3. Tools:

• Team composition sheet
• Case finding procedure
• Questionnaire for covered cases 
• Questionnaire for non-covered cases
• Active case finding data collection form