Objectives

The mission of the IHSN is to foster the improvement of the availability, accessibility and quality of survey data in developing countries, and to encourage their analysis and use by national and international development decision makers, the research community, and other stakeholders.

Intermediate objectives to achieve these goals are:

• Improved coordination of internationally-sponsored survey programs with emphasis on timing, sequencing, frequency and cost-effectiveness;
• Provision of harmonized technical and methodological guidelines by the international community, in particular related to data collection instruments;
• Availability of a central survey data catalog to better inform users of the availability of survey and census data from all sources;
• Provision of tools and guidelines to data producers, to foster documentation, dissemination and preservation of microdata according to international standards and best practices.