Universal Education Foundation

Methodology For Conducting The Voice of Children Survey By Chief Executive Officer Alpha International For Research Polling and Informatics Al-irsal st, Al-Karmil building, 1st floor #5 Ramallah, West Bank Palestine Tel: Fax: Mobile: Website: Dr. Faisal Awartani

The process of conducting a survey among school students Design of the questionnaire (that is transforming the objectives into measurable set of indictors). Piloting the questionnaire as well as the process of conducting the survey. Sample design. Training of field researchers. Data collection. Data entry and data cleaning. Data analysis and reporting.

Questionnaire Design Design of the questionnaire will be the responsibility of Universal Education Foundation (UEF) research team. The design of the questionnaire will be shared with the different stakeholders. The design of the questions should take into consideration the targeted age group by the survey.

Piloting Piloting of the questionnaire as well as the process of the survey is important for detecting any problems that might occur among students while answering the questionnaire. The students might raise certain concerns about some of the questions in terms of how they might understand these questions as well as their difficulty levels. The pilot is also important for testing the logistics in terms of how the school personal might interact and be responsive for the field researchers.

Sample Selection Sample selection will be done using multistage cluster sampling. First a sample of clusters will be selected in different areas of the West Bank and Gaza using probability proportional to size sampling (PPS). Each cluster will represent one section of student from 9th or 10th grade students. Then all the students in the selected section will be interviewed. Probability proportional to size sampling guarantees obtaining unbiased estimators for the parameters of interest.

The first stage cluster sampling will be done as follows: Cumulative Section size ( # of students in each 9th or 10th grade sections) Location number C1=S1 S11 C2=S1+S2 S22 C3=S1+S2+S3 S33 C4=S1+S2+S3+S4 S44... CN=S1+…+SNSNN

The sampling interval L = CN/ k, where k the number of clusters to be selected. A random number X0 is selected from the interval [0,L]. The ith random number Ri=X0+(i-1)*L is calculated. The ith population location is selected in the sample if Ri belongs to the interval [Ci, C(i+1)]. The sample selection described above ensures getting unbiased estimators for the parameters of interest in this survey.

Training of field researchers The field researchers as well as district coordinators for the survey will be given at least one day training workshop on the questionnaire. The objective of the training will be: Discussing the problems faced the field researchers in the Pilot study. Standardizing the understanding of the field researchers to the questionnaire. Giving the field researchers instructions about how to communicate with the staff in the schools they visit and how to respond to questions from students while filling the questionnaires.

Data collection The questionnaire will be self administered by the students. One field researcher will be present at the time the students are filling their questionnaire to answer questions that might be raised by students. The field researcher will introduce the objectives of the study for the students. Moreover, the field researcher will assure the students on the confidentiality of the collected. The students will be informed that the data will be used for statistical tabulation only. Non of the teachers will be present in the classroom at the time the students are filling their questionnaires.

Data Entry & Data Cleaning An Access program will be design to reflect the same image of the questionnaire. Control and cross-validation rules will be defined on each of the variables in the questionnaire. Data cleaning will be done to ensure that the data matrix is reliable and ready for analysis. Cross-tabulation and cross-validation analysis will be conducted to insure the internal consistency of the data matrix.

Data Analysis After data is entered to Access database and cleaned. Data analysis will be conducted. The following steps will be followed in the analysis: Transforming the data from Access database to SPSS data using stat-transfer program. Merging the three files (Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon) to produce one file. Producing basic frequencies for the three countries. Producing cross-tabulation by (grade, sex, locality,..) as well as other background variables agreed upon by the research team.