Interviewer instructions
You are to obtain each person's age in completed years, that is, the age at the time of their last birthday. If you have difficulty obtaining the ages of household members, use the following methods to probe for the correct age. (more details are in the Woman's Questionnaire Q107).
If the respondent knows the ages of household members, write it in the space provided. If the respondent does not know individuals' ages and you cannot get the information from another member of the household, you will need to use one of the following methods to estimate age.
a) Ask about the year of birth and compute the individuals' age as follows:
· Already celebrated birthday in the current year. If the individual has had her birthday in the current year, subtract the year of birth from the current year [2012].
· Not yet celebrated birthday in the current year. If the individual has not yet had her birthday in the current year, subtract the year of birth from last year [2011].
· Does not know when the individual's birthday is. If the respondent does not keep track of the time within a year when an individual member's birthday falls, it is sufficient to subtract year of birth from the current year [2012].
(b) If the respondent does not know an individual's age, and year of birth, you will have to probe to try to estimate age. There are several ways to probe for age:
1) Ask the respondent how old the individual was when he/she attained a certain milestone in life such as marriage, or had a first child, or attained a certain education level and then try to estimate how long ago the individual got married or had a first child.
Example: If she says individual XX was 19 years old when she had her first child and that the child is now 12 years old, she is probably 31 years old.
2) Relate age to that of someone else in the household whose age is more reliably known.
3) Try to determine how old she was at the time of an important event such as war, flood, earthquake, change in political regime, etc. and add her age at that time to the number of years that have passed since the event.
(c) The respondent does not know an individual's age and probing did not help.
If probing does not help in determining the age and date of birth was not known, you will have to estimate her age. Remember, this is a last resort to be used only when all your efforts at probing have failed.