Methodological Issues in Data Collection from the Youth and Adolescents

Ponnambala Thiagarajan, Population Foundation of India
A. A. Jayachandran, Karnataka Health Promotion Trust

According to 2001 census, about 22 percent of the Indian population comprises the younger age group 10-19. In this paper an attempt has been made to raise some methodological issues. These issues were identified from two different surveys, which are conducted in two parts of the country, as the part of two adolescent action oriented programs. Data collected from these two areas have raised many issues. The emerging issues were coverage of adolescents- prone to school going population, unmarried girls, less coverage of boys, non availability of unemployed youths- quality of responses- low level of knowledge on SRH issues, cultural barriers in contacting adolescents alone, and mental block in participating in the interviews and programs. These barriers were further aggravated by the heterogeneity of the group, age, sex, gender, marital status, religion, caste, region/ state and economic milieu. This paper tries to provide suggestions for the policy implications and intervention strategies.