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P12. Age:
How old is [the respondent]? Age in completed years _ _
Use two digits in completing age; if under one year, write '00'
Questionnaire instructions
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Column P12 - Age
82. 'How old is this person?'
83. Write the person's age in completed years - that is, the person's age at his or her last birthday. For babies under one year of age, write 00. Use two digits in completing age; e.g. 01, 02, etc. Persons ages 97 and older should be coded as 97.
84. Be careful not to round ages up to next birthday. A child who is aged four years and eleven months should, for example be entered as 04 and not 05.
85. Many people do not know their ages. If a person's age is not known, you must make the best estimate possible. The use of' NK' in this column is forbidden.
86. There are various ways in which you can estimate a person's age. Sometimes people have documents, such as baptismal certificates, which show the year of birth, in which case it is easy to calculate age.
87. Most people have Identity cards showing when they were born. Avoid using the IDs as a means of estimating a person's age. More often than not if a person does not know when he/she was born, then the age in the ID is also wrong.
88. Generally it is not so easy. Concentrate first on establishing the ages of one or two persons in the household. One reliable age may help in working out the ages of others if it is known whether they are older or younger and by how many years.
89. It is sometimes possible to estimate a person's age by relating his or her birth to some notable event. With these instructions is a calendar of events, which lists the dates of events in the history of each district. If the person can remember how old he or she was at the time of the event, you can work out the person's age. .
90. How to use the calendar of events to estimate the respondent's age.
(i)
(a) Ask him/her to name any historical event (in their district) which he/she has been told occurred around the time of his/her birth/childhood.
(b) Ask him/her to give you an indication of how old he/she was when that event occurred or how many years elapsed before his/her birth.
(c) Then use this information to work out his/her age. For example, if a respondent tells you that he was about 15-years old when Kenya attained her Independence, this person should be 15 + 25 (i.e. 12th Dec. 1963 to 23 August 1989) = 40 years. If this method fails, you should try the following approach:
(ii)
(a) Simply estimate how old he/she may be.
(b) Then select from your list of local, or district historical events, some events which occurred around the time when, according to your estimate, he must have been born.
(c) Ask whether he/she has heard about any of these events.
(d) If he/she has, ask him/her to give you an indication of how old he/she was when this event occurred or how many years elapsed before he was born.
(e) From this information you can work out his/her age.
91. Some tribes have systems of 'age grades' or 'age sets' from which a person's age can be worked out. A person's age grade may only give a rough idea of his or her age since the same grade may include people of widely different ages, but it is better than nothing. Some tribes have age grades for men but not for women, in which case you can often obtain an idea of a woman's age by asking which age grade of men she is associated with. Some age grades are listed in the event calendar, you can inquire about others from chiefs and elders.
92. If all else fails, then base your estimate on biological relationships. For instance, a woman who does not know her age but who has two or three children of her own is unlikely to be less than 15 years old however small she may look. You may then try to work out her age by the following methods:
(a) Determine the age of her oldest child.
(b) Then assume that the average woman in Kenya gives birth to her first child at about 18 years. However without further probing, you should not base your assumption on the oldest child who is at present living. There is the likelihood that in certain cases the first child died or that the woman had miscarriages or stillborn. Therefore if the woman tells you that she had one miscarriage or stillbirth before the oldest living child was born you should make your estimation from the year of the first miscarriage/still-birth or live birth.
93. Note that some women do have children early in life. Therefore in every case you must find out whether she had her first child, miscarriage or still-birth at the usual age before you assume she was aged 18 years at her first pregnancy.
94. Only as a last resort should you estimate a person's age from his/her physical features. If you are obtaining information about an absent person from a third person then rely on the information he/she gives you to estimate the absent person's age.
95. When you have arrived at the best estimate you can make of a person's age, check that it is compatible with his or her relationship to others in the household. Obviously children cannot be older than their parents, women seldom marry before they are 12, and men before they are 18, and so on.
96. Any estimate of age, however rough, is better than 'NK' in this column. Do the best you can to report ages accurately.