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- Provides objective, measurable and representative data for problem analysis, planning and evaluation purposes,
- Facilitates the comparison of situations at the beginning and the end of a project cycle for impact assessment,
- Helps to determine causes or determinants of the nutritional problem,
- Enables the construction of statistical relationships between factors and the nutritional status for intervention planning,
- Can compare its results with other standardized surveys because of the internationally accepted indices, cut-off points and measurement standards,
- Provides information for indicators (Planning matrix),
- Contribute to quality management issues,
- Gives justification for interventions and activities in certain populations and the surveyed region,
- Provides valid results, which can be used for resource allocation and policy making.
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- Is expensive in terms of time, money and human resources,
- Needs specific skills and training to guarantee an adequate application, implementation and interpretation of the data,
- Is not participatory or flexible because of the standardisation that is necessary for the purposes of comparison,
- Cannot sufficiently assess cultural aspects, nutritional habits and customs as this type of information is difficult to obtain during a standardised survey,
- Highlights the situation of the surveyed population at the moment, but cannot assess processes or social relations within the community,
- Must rely on the answers of the surveyed people, which should be compared with observations to guarantee the reliability of the data. If questions are not well formulated, there is a risk of collecting superficial answers, which do not reflect the real situation,
- Has a risk of producing large data banks without a justifiable analysis.
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