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ecause she was sent to her brother's house to look after hls baby as his mfe had just
glven b~rth to a chlld
(11) Other ep~dern~olog~cal rnetl~ods
Data on the causes of dropout were obta~ned from 29 girls and 24 boys who were
dropouts In the cohort The frequency of vanous causes recorded IS glven In Table
6 13 The most Important cause of dropout In girls was poverty, while ~t was poor
performance In boys It was also observed that whlle 6 g~rls dropped out because of the
need to help at home none of the boys dropped out for the same cause
6 5 D~scuss~on
tlelng an Important aspect In the overall development of a person and the country
educat~on has been extens~vely studled Quant~tat~ve data pamcularly on lhteracy rate,
school enrollment school dropout and to some extent on school absenteeism are
ava~lable mostly In the form of reports (Anonymous 1996) However aspects related to
peoples perception of educat~on and ~ts Importance as a wntnbutlng factor In dewdlng
the status of a child has not been addressed adequately Therefore, these Issues have
been addressed uslng quant~tat~vep~dem~olog~cal and, ethnograph~c techn~ques
lncorporatlng both qualltatlve and quantltat~ve approach The matn purpose of
ethnograph~c aporoach was to understand the peoples polnl of wew The ~mportance of
Pdll~at~on to a girl rli~ld 1r1 t~rr soc~al context has been d~scussed In the chapter on
social status of the g~rl cli~ld (Chapter 7 5)
6.5. f Importance of education
Ethnograph~c data revealed that almost all the v~llagers felt that educat~on was an
Important asset in Ilfe, more so for boys. Many felt that education would bulld up the