AIDSQuest: The HIV/AIDS Survey Library
Survey Summaries

Population Council—Evaluation of Services for Orphans and Vulnerable Children, People Living with HIV, and Youth in Zambia (RAPIDS)

Overview
This instrument is a baseline survey for the evaluation of services (RAPIDS: Reaching HIV/AIDS Affected People with Integrated Development and Support) provided to families affected by AIDS in Zambia. Services include support for children who have been orphaned and rendered vulnerable and people living with HIV and AIDS, in addition to the provision of youth livelihoods support and abstinence education. The Population Council, with Zambian-based RuralNet Associates Ltd, conducted this baseline survey.

Methodology/validity
At the household level, the questionnaire was administered to the household head, or spouse if unavailable. Major sections include demographic/background characteristics, support services, household economic status, general livelihood issues, and questions for a chronically ill person. The child questionnaire was used for children aged 10–14 years, selected at random from all eligible children living in the sampled households. Children were asked about their background, food and services, reproductive health knowledge, and social behavior. Youth, aged 15–18 and 19–25 years, were selected at random from all eligible youth living in sampled household. The youth questionnaire included here is for youth aged 15–18 years. They were asked about their background, food and services, care services, attitudes, reproductive health knowledge, and social behavior. Six sites in Zambia (mixed rural, peri-urban, urban)—Chongwe, Kalomo, Mazabuka, Mpika, Ndola, Petauke—were sampled. All questionnaires were administered face-to-face by local researchers.

Survey instruments were developed in a participatory and iterative process involving RAPIDS partners at the headquarters and district levels, including those directly responsible for service provision. Instrument development drew upon the experiences of tools previously used by World Vision CHARMS, UNICEF, Save the Children, and Horizons/Population Council. Due to the sensitive nature of working among children, informed consent processes and survey questions were developed in close consultation with a Zambian psychologist specializing in the provision of psychosocial support to vulnerable children. All tools were locally reviewed and pre-tested in the field to ensure that the questions asked were appropriate for the intended respondents, did not violate local customs, and were not traumatic. Instruments were pre-tested prior to the start of fieldwork.

Questionnaires were drafted in English, to be administered in appropriate local languages by skilled multilingual interviewers. Simultaneous translation was used because it would have been impractical to translate and back-translate all the tools into all seven of Zambia’s main languages used in the study sites (Nyanja, Tonga, Luvale, Kaonde, Bemba, Lozi and Lunda). Instead, the costs of translation were invested in recruiting highly educated bilingual or trilingual interviewers. Their training included discussion and practice of simultaneous translation of the tools. Within the training sessions, discussions were held between interviewers of same-language groups regarding how to translate some of the key terms for specialist vocabulary required by the tools, and the group reconvened as a whole to discuss the translations proposed by each language group.

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This page updated 21 August 2006

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