Questionnaire Text

Questionnaire form view entire document: text image

Section 3: Details of persons in the household

6. Age

What is [the respondent]'s age? Recorded in completed years. If less than one year, record '00.'
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Questionnaire instructions view entire document: text image

Question 6:- What is [the respondent]'s Age in Years?

The correct age in completed years of each member of the household during the enumeration should be recorded in the boxes provided in this question and the appropriate code should be shaded. Age in completed years means recording the completed years by ignoring the months and days after the completed years. For example, if the age of a person is 15 years, 11 months and 29 days, only "15" should be recorded and shaded. If the age of an infant is less than one year, code 00 should be recorded and shaded in this question, and if the age of a person is 97 years and above Code "97" should be recorded and shaded in the space provided under this question.

It is expected to meet persons who do not know their ages exactly or who are not voluntary to tell their ages. In this case, great effort should be done without being fed up to get exact age of each members of the household as far as possible. To solve these problems, some of the possible techniques are given below.

Probing ages by mentioning historical events

It is necessary to estimate the age of the person by asking the respondent if there is a historical events occurred known nationally or specifically in that area when the person was born or by asking the respondent what was the age of the person during the occurrence of the event or by asking the respondent how long was the occurrence of the even before the person was born. For example, if the age of a person was 10 years during the eruption of the revolution in 1974, the age of the person in 2007 is almost 43 years (2007 - 1974 +10 = 43) and this code should be recorded and shaded. Therefore, it is possible to estimate the age of a person by relating the year in which the person was born with the year that the historical event was occurred and the list of the years in which the main events occurred is attached in appendix 2 of this enumerators' manual.

Computing age based on members who know their ages.

Some of the members of the household or neighbors may know their ages. In this case it is possible to estimate the age of a person by relating with the persons' ages who knew their age exactly.

It may be possible to estimate the ages of the members of the household if the exact age of a person among the members is known. For example, if the age of the first child of a household is known to be 13 years, it is possible to estimate the age of his mother to be at least 31 years. This estimation is done based on the expectation that mothers usually give birth to their first baby at the age of 18 years old and the age of the mother can be estimated as 18+13 = 31 years. It can be possible to estimate the ages of the persons who are relatives by comparing the age of one person to others. For example, mothers give birth to their children usually in two years interval. The age of the older child may be 9 years if the age of the younger child is exactly 7 years. Sometimes aged people exaggerate their ages. The ages of these people can be estimated by comparing with the ages of their first child and grandchildren's ages. Therefore, as far as possible appropriately estimated age of the member should be recorded if the age of one member of the household is exactly known.

In addition to this, it is possible to estimate the age of a member of the household if he/she knows the age at marriage and the number of years after marriage up to the time of the census. Some people want to tell their ages in 0 or 5 ending digits. Even though the respondents want to tell their ages in these digits, enumerators should make great effort to get exact ages of the respondents by using the above probing techniques. The ages of some people may off course, be 10, 15, 20, 25, ... etc.

Parents can easily remember specially the ages of their babies and children under age 10 years and these ages should be appropriately recorded in completed years. But sometimes there is a situation that is not possible to get the ages of infants easily, and in this case, great efforts should be done to estimate the appropriate age by applying the above probing techniques.

Based on the above appropriate probing techniques of getting ages and posing appropriate question to the respondent, the age of each members of the household in completed years should be recorded in the space provided in question 6 and the codes should be correctly shaded.

Remarks:- It is necessary to mention the name of the each member of the household when posing questions that have names in the questionnaire. For example, for the member of the household named Chaltu, the question "What is NAME's' age in years" should be asked as "What is Chaltu's age in years?"