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was felt that more information could be obtained on sensitive issues like gender
preference In children and status of the girl child in the family by ~nte~ewing
In addit~on, focus gmup discussions, a case study and nonpartiupant
obse~at~on were other sourws of information.
(I) Indepth ~nterv~ews and focus group d~scuss~ons
Indepth tnterv~ews were held wth 8 women and 2 men only More men could not be
lnterv~ewed because they felt shy to express thelr wews to a female lnvestlgator
Further many felt that these Issues could be better d~scussed only wth women Out of
the 8 women, 6 wfre mamed and had ch~ldren and 2 were unmarned young g~rls
around 20 years of age Both the men were mamed and had ch~ldren The age of the
rnamed women ranged from 23-40 years The men were about 30 and 35 years old
Focus group discuss~ons were held w~th 4 groups One was a group of 8 mamed
women In the age range of 2545 years w~th ch~ldren The other was a group of 9
mamed men w~th ch~ldren They were all In the age range of 2550 years except one
man who was 70 years old One group d~scuss~on each was held wth groups of 10
adolescent girls and boys who were In school The In-depth lntarwews and focus group
d~scuss~ons were conducted ~n a manner slmllar to that descnbed under the
methodology In the chapter on health (Chapter 5 3) Structured 0bseNatl0n f0c~Slng
on some Issues lhke actlwty pattern and d~et glven to a child was also made dunng vlslts
to the wllage
(ti) Quantitative
Based on the results of the analysis of the qualitative data, a structured questionnaire
was developed and distributed to randomly selected 80 women and 80 men from the