ASHWAS (A Survey of Household Water and Sanitation) is a participatory survey that covers 28 districts of Karnataka covering more than 17,200 households across 172 gram panchayats (GPs). This was a peoples' survey, and the surveyors were selected from the respective communities that included students, women from self help groups, local NGO partners and other volunteers.
Overall Arghyam has worked with over 18 partners starting from August 2008 for ASHWAS survey. The partners has been mostly the local NGOs who have worked extensively with the communities in the respective district/s. Partnership has been in developing the questionnaires, executing the survey, analysis, report generation etc.
The ASHWAS survey design and methedology has been arrived at after consulting the experts(including Government officials) and referencing some of the past surveys in this domain. Except Bangalore Urban district all the other 28 districts have been covered in the sampling for the survey.