Type of Research Instrument
The Questionnaires
The questionnaires hereafter are referred to as modules. There are several modules since the beginning of the education project:
1) Household module
2) Primary school module
3) Parent guardian module
4) Education child update (schooling history) module
5) Child school status update questionnaire
6) Education child update module
7) Primary school questionnaire
8) Child Behavior Questionnaire
9) Supplementary primary school module
The household module
The household module served as a starting point of the interview. It identified the respondent's household. The module was administered to the owner of the household or any other adult who was credible and who usually lives in the household. It served to identify individual households and its occupants and thus served as a basis for the other modules to be administered. It contains a complete list of the household members and some basic information on age, sex, parental survivorship, education, and labor force participation.
For each of the household, information on water source and trash disposal methods, type of toilet facility used by the household, materials for the house (roof, floor, and walls), fuel for lighting and cooking, and ownership of assets was collected.
The Primary schools module:
This module serves to generate indicators on schooling participation. The module is meant for headmasters or teachers knowledgeable enough to provide information on the school. It comprises of the following sections:
Background
This serves to identify the name of the school, the date and time of the interview and the location of the school.
Particulars of respondent
This section of the module collected information on the respondent and establishes the respondent's full names, position held by respondent in the school and how long the respondent has been working in the school.
School background
This section sets to establish whether the school is registered, if registered under which ministry the school is registered(ministry of culture or ministry of education), its registration number, the type of curriculum followed by the school and the management of the school. The understanding is that the name of the school being used maybe different from the one under which the school is registered. The information is important especially if we are to link the school to the Ministry of Education or Ministry of Culture records. This information will most probably be obtained from the school records (if they exist).
School facilities
This section sets to collect information on the school facilities, such as textbooks provided by the school to the pupils in each grade they include Mathematics, Science ,Kiswahili and English, a library, science lab for pupils use ,a playground for outdoor sports pupils use and inventory of all school's equipment e.g. desks. For purposes of this project, a library is considered to be a room which has reference books where pupils can go to read.
This section also offers information on the school ownership of a toilet facility for use by the pupils and whether there are separate toilets provided for boys and girls. It also offers information on the school's water source and the availability of electricity in the school.
In addition the module in this section probes the respondent on whether the inspector of schools has visited the school in the current schooling year and requests for the date and year of visit. The inspector of school is from the City Council education department or from the Ministry of Education.
Enrollment for the current school year
Enrollment refers to children who are current registered for specific grades/classes in the school.
The objective of this section is to provide information on the number of boys and girls in each of the streams in the school in the current school year. It also sets to establish whether there were any pupils who were turned away during enrollment in the current year and the approximate number of pupils who were turned away from enrolling in the school.
Expenditure on schooling
The module here asks questions on the school fee structure, it seeks to establish whether the pupils are required to pay fees and how much (Kenya shillings) they pay for the following: tuition, construction fund, Parents Teachers Association (PTA), extra classes, examination fees, school meals and other items.
This was required to be filled for all grades in the school and whether paid annually, termly, monthly and weekly.
It also provides information on whether the pupils are required to wear uniform in order to be allowed in class and the source of purchase of the uniform.
Examination results
The module records the Kenya examination results from 2000 to 2004 and the total marks obtained by all the pupils who participated in the national examinations in the school.
School staffing
School staffing section required that information about all the employees who work in the school be completed. This section listed full names, age, sex, position held by the staff, how long they have been working in the school and their professional qualification. It further listed the number of lessons each teacher instructs per week.
School buildings
This section offers information on the school's building infrastructure. In order to obtain a comprehensive outline of the infrastructure, all the buildings were measured (length, width) in meters. In addition it records use of the building and the general condition of the room.
Parent guardian module:
The parent guardian module is part of a set of modules designed to generate indicators on schooling participation and its determinants that are sensitive to urban slums. The module is meant for parents who have children that are between the ages of 5 to 19 years old. One module is completed for each parent or guardian who resides in the household. It contains the following sections:
Particulars of the respondent
It sets to collect information on the respondent's full names, age and sex.
General questions on education
The module probes the respondent's familiarity on the schools that are nearby to his/her household both primary and secondary schools. It queries the respondent further on the distance from their household to the school and the amount of time that it would take for them to walk to the school.
In addition the module in this section surveys the knowledge of the respondent about free primary education. It further asserts to realize the respondents opinion on the achievements of free primary education in government schools since its inception. It probes on the performance of pupils, teachers, and the availability of textbooks and other stationary for pupils use in government schools.
It also touches on the parent's participation on the events that take place in the schools which their children attend and inquires on who makes decisions on the schooling affairs of the children. The options here were it the mother, father, both parents equally, guardian, child himself /herself or someone else.
Parental involvement
To obtain an in depth overview of how a parent is involved in a child's life, the parent involvement section collect s information on every child in the household aged 5-19 independently .This section surveys the parents knowledge of each child's day t o day activities both at home and in school. This section has provision for the child's name and line number.
Education child module (Child Behavior):
This module is part of a set of modules designed to generate indicators on schooling participation, expenses incurred for purposes of schooling and the overall child behavior. The module is meant for children aged 5-19 years irrespective of whether they are in school or not and this module was completed for each child. For children aged 12-19 years, emphases were made to interview the child himself /herself.
This module contains the following sections:
Details of the last complete school year:
The module gathers information on the expenses associated with schooling of the child. It records the source of the money to pay for the expenses and how the expenses were incurred. This section would not be filled if the child was not in school.
In subsequent round (Round 2), this section was moved to the parental involvement to the parent guardian questionnaire.
Children currently in school
This section of the module offers information on school going children, where it collects information on the schooling activities of the child such as how homework is issued, how much homework is issued by teachers in different lessons and if the child does his /her homework. It also sets to identify if the dietary plan of the household caters for the child. i.e. if the child gets meals before going to school and when in school.
Formal training and apprenticeship
The formal training and apprenticeship section of the education child module was administered to every child in the household aged 12-19 years old, regardless of whether they were in school or not. The apprenticeship and training sets to establish whether the child had received any kind of informal training in a trade or skill. This may have been acquired through full-time apprenticeship with a skilled person or through an informal relationship with a skilled person. In addition it probes for type of skills acquired by the child e.g. pottery, cookery, carpentry etc, and the duration of the training and whether the child earned any money from using the skill.
Child behavior
This section was filled for children aged 12-19 years. It emphasized on confidentiality on the information gathered form the respondent. This was a comprehensive section of the module which probed the respondent on his/her perception of the school that they attend, their parents or guardians knowledge on the child's activities in and out of school, overall knowledge of their friends behavior in and out of school, it also contains an elaborate section for females reproductive health and most comprehensively on drugs and substance use.
On drugs and substance use the section probed the respondent on whether they had ever taken drugs, smoked a cigarette, taken alcohol or even taken any substance and whether they were taken in and out of the school premises.
Child update module:
The child update module is set to collect information on the children aged 5-19 years. The questionnaire was to be completed for all children in the household in this age group. The questionnaire collected information on school enrollment and schooling history of the child regardless of whether they were in school at that moment or not. For children aged 5,6,7,8 and 9 in the year 2005 the only information completed for this module was only for one, two, three, four and five respectively. This is because the module was set to collect information for the child's history form the year 2000-2005.
During the subsequent years, retrospective schooling information was collected 5 years before the current interview year, i.e. in 2006 retrospective schooling information was collected for the years 2001 to 2005, and 2002 to 2006 for the year 2007. During these other years, the questionnaire was/is only administered to new individuals into the study area or children who reach the age of five years and above. Similarly, following the DSS concepts, a child who out-migrates and the later in-migrates, the questionnaire is administered to him/her in order to bridge the schooling information for the duration the child was away.
It was thus divided into the following sections:
School participation for current year
The first section of the module sets to establish the current schooling status of the child, where it records the name of the school the child is attending, grade, location of the school and whether the child has changed or dropped out of school in the current year. It also probed on the reasons for changing schools and dropping school by the child.
School participation for previous years
This section of the module collected information on the child's schooling history from the year 2000-2005 if the interview year is 2005. As mentioned earlier this section would observe that children aged 5,6,7,8 and 9 in 2005 the schooling history completed would be for one, two, three, four and five respectively, thus children aged above these ages, information would be completed for all years from 2000-2005.
Education child update (round 2)
This module was administered in the second and subsequent rounds of the education research. The education update module is designed for each individual for whom education information (Education update module) was collected in the initial census or during subsequent years of the education research. This information was collected from children aged 5-19 years. Therefore, the questions target individual responses from children in our initial survey of this age and seek to confirm their previous and current schooling status. This module will assist us to know:
i. If the child is still in school
ii. Who dropped out of school and the reasons for dropping out
iii. Who changed school and reasons why they changed schools
If the child is aged 12-19, then efforts were made to speak with him/her and if the child is aged 5-11, the respondent was ideally an adult (parent, guardian) who usually lives in the household.
One weakness, of the child education update (1,2,& 3) is that one cannot monitor class progression in that, it does not collect class and level information for all individuals. It only collects such data for individuals who have changed school. However, in the fourth and final education update done this year 2007, such questions have been added and will be used to fix class and level for individuals for the years that it was not collected.
