Behavioral WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) Officer Interview Questions & Answers:

1. What is Sanitation marketing?

An approach to increase sanitation coverage using the assumption that sanitation is a business where services and products can be sold by providers and retailers to interested consumers. It borrows from private sector experience to develop, place, and promote an appropriate product at the right price, which can be a latrine, toilet, or other excreta disposal system. It brings together supply and demand, and assumes that market research needs to be conducted to understand consumer demand, and that appropriate products and services need to be put in place to satisfy that demand. Program monitoring should be set up to keep the market operating effectively.

2. What is Multivariate analysis?

Statistical analysis that studies more than one variable at a time. It is generally used to refer to analyses that include at least three variables. For example, how age and education have an impact on hand washing practices.

3. What is open defecation?

Open defecation is defined as defecation in fields, forests, bushes, bodies of water or other open spaces.

4. What is Logistic regression?

A statistical analysis procedure used to make predictions. For example, using a five-point agreement-disagreement scale, the practice of hand washing may be predicted from the measure of a respondent's belief that other mothers of children under five in the neighborhood practice hand washing.

5. What is sustainable sanitation?

The main objective of a sanitation system is to protect and promote human health by providing a clean environment and breaking the cycle of disease. In order to be sustainable a sanitation system has to not only be economically viable, socially acceptable and technically and institutionally appropriate, but it should also protect the environment and natural resources.

6. What is Internal consistency?

A measure that indicates whether items that are presumably part of a scale measure the same construct. It usually measures whether several items that propose to measure the same general construct would produce the same results. Internal consistency scores range from 0 to 1. An acceptable reliability score ranges from 0.65 to 0.70. Internal consistency scores of 0.95 or higher would mean that the items are redundant. Analysis may permit dropping items to obtain acceptable internal consistency scores.

7. Why is water, sanitation, and hygiene so important?

WASH is foundational to our development model as an organization. When we work with communities to help them become self-sustaining, water, sanitation, and hygiene are some of the first things we look at and the first programs we implement. These elements need to be in place for education, health, and economic development to work.

8. What is Colilert test?

A test for detecting coliforms and E. coli in water that produces results rapidly. The Colilert test suggested in this document is a presence/absence test. It is inexpensive and detects E. coli down to 10 coliform forming units (CFU) per 100ml, below which is considered low risk.

9. What are some of the biggest challenges you face in teaching hygiene and sanitation?

Feminine hygiene for girls -- it's something you might not think of, but school attendance drops off dramatically once girls reach puberty. This is because of the stigma surrounding menstruation, lack of latrines and places to wash up at school, and lack of education about how to make and maintain reusable feminine hygiene products.

World Vision is helping to address these problems, along with installing pit latrines and washrooms at schools, so girls have a safe place to wash up so they can keep going to class. We are all about removing barriers to education.

10. What is Coliform bacteria?

A bacterial indicator of the sanitary quality of food and water. This bacterium is abundant in feces of warm-blooded animals and can be found in aquatic environments, in soil, and in vegetation. Coliforms may not be the cause of disease, but they can be easily cultured and may indicate that pathogens of fecal content are present.