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namely school records and census It was understood that the data obta~ned by these
twc methods would be dtfferent because of the ~nherent dtfference ~n the methodology
The data from the school record was collected for the prevlous one year
whlle the
data from the census constdered dropout ln ch~ldren between 5-20 years of age
,iiespectlve of the ttme of dropout (For example a chlld who had dropped out 7 years
ago would have been tncluded for analys~s ~n the census but not ~n the school data
wt~~ch was restr~cted to orie prevtous year)
(111) Cross sect~onal survey of school ch~ldren
School ch~ldren were Intew~ewed about absentee~sm dunng school vlslts The school
was vts~ted on 10 consecuttve work~r~g days Each day one class was ws~ted ~n the
rnornlng
Dur~ng the vls~t the reason for absentee~sm was obta~ned from all those
students In that class who were absent the prevlous day but were present on that day
The data so obta~ned were entered tn a structured form
(tv) Cohort
School golng chtldren tn the selected households for the cohort study were quest~oned
for school absenteetsm
For a per~od of one year, these children were wsited once ~n
15 days and tnforrnat~on was obtatned about thelr school attendance and reasons for
absenteelsm, ~f any. The source of information was the student, sibling or parent The
dropouts ~n the cohort were a source of infonat~on for reasons for dropout.
6 3 2 Organization and analyses of date
Both ethnography and other ep~demtologtcal data were organ~zed and analyzed tn a
manner stm~lar to that descr~bed ~n the chapter on health (Chapter 5 3) Stat~st~cal tests
Were applted on the same prlnc~ples as those for Issues under the aspect of health