AIDSQuest: The HIV/AIDS Survey Library
Survey Summaries

Family Health International—The Zambia Strengthening Partnerships for the Empowerment of Orphans and Vulnerable Children Project: Orphans and Vulnerable Children Baseline Survey

Overview
This survey was developed as part of the project Zambia Strengthening Community Partnerships for the Empowerment of Orphans and Vulnerable Children (SCOPE-OVC), implemented by CARE/Zambia and Family Health Trust. It was developed for two reasons. The first reason was to gather baseline data for evaluating the effectiveness of the SCOPE-OVC project in the identified target sites in Zambia. The SCOPE project is working in nine districts in Zambia in order to mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS on children and build community capacity to address the needs of households caring for OVC. The second reason this instrument was developed was to determine the feasibility of conducting regular assessments of households caring for OVC and their ability to address the issues with which they are confronted. 

Methodology/validity
This study was conducted in February 2001 with funding from Displaced Children and Orphans Fund (DCOF) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through Family Health International (FHI). The study was a quantitative study conducted with 1,014 households identified as caring for children who were defined as either an orphan or as vulnerable. For this study a household was defined as a group of people who share the same space to sleep and share common meals. These households will also be caring for children below the age of 25¹ who are identified as orphans or vulnerable children. An orphan has been defined as a child who has lost his or her mother or father or both, and a vulnerable child is defined as a child who has an  ill parent, lives in a high level of poverty, or lives in a household with orphaned children.

The sites selected for this survey are the areas where the SCOPE-OVC project had been working. They were selected for the SCOPE project because they represented communities which were perceived to be particularly hard hit by HIV and poverty, and because of the high rates of households caring for OVC. The sample design was a probability sampling design. Initially each community was mapped out to identify major routes and geographic markers such as churches, schools, stores, etc. Since the research compounds were selected because of their increased levels of OVC, the maps were used to ensure extensive coverage of the compounds by interviewers.

Each day interviewers entered the compound and approached the first household they came to. They were then instructed to follow an every third household pattern to ensure randomness. The routes used by interviewers were marked on each map and beginning points were varied from day to day. Upon entering a household the interviewers requested to speak with the head of the household; once the study was introduced to the head of the household the interviewer determined whether or not there was a young adult or child under 25 years of age living in the home who fit the definition of an OVC. If there was not, the interviewer moved on to the third household up the street.

This survey focused on the views and perceptions of the heads of the households in order to assess the overall situation within the household. The specific sample size selected in each district was determined based on a need to be able to compare levels of variables of interest over time within the district as well as compare these variables between districts. One of the main variables of interest was the percent of children living in the household attending school. Due to the lack of information regarding the percent of children per household attending school, the size was determined using the percent of all children currently reported as being enrolled in school. According to the “Living conditions in Zambia” report from 1998, approximately 61 percent of all children between the ages of 7 and 18 were enrolled in school. In order to see this percent increase by 15 percent, within this target group, a total of 252 households with 7–18-year-olds needed to be interviewed in each district, for a minimum of 1,008 households in all. In the end, a total of 1,014 households were interviewed with all households having at least one child between the ages of 7 and 18. Fifty percent (1,278) of the 7–18-year-olds were orphaned and the other 50 percent were considered vulnerable because of their living situation.

The research team was made up of members of the staff of SCOPE, Family Health Trust, Family Health International/Zambia, Family Health International/Arlington, a Zambian evaluation consultant, a Zambian bio-statistician, four teams of interviewers consisting of one team leader and six interviewers, and a team of four data managers.

The protocol was finalized in mid-January and a draft questionnaire was created with input from the research team as well as by using an instrument piloted by the Horizons Program/Population Council in Uganda. As a part of training  the interviewers the questionnaire was pilot tested in a Lusaka compound that was not selected for the study. After the pilot testing the questionnaire was adapted and finalized. 

¹ The age of 24 was used as the upper cut-off for defining an OVC because of its implications for future SCOPE-OVC programming.

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This page updated 21 August 2006

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