Behavioural Surveillance Surveys - The Wisdom of Whores

In some settings it may not be acceptable
to conduct surveys of youth covering sensitive
and potentially embarrassing topics at their
place of residence. In this event, it will be
necessary to identify groups or segments of
the general population of “youth” for whom it
is feasible to locate and interview outside of
their homes. What criteria should be used in
defining which sub-groups or segments of
youth to pursue in non-household surveys?
One possibility is to include targeted
sub-groups of youth for which there are
interventions planned or in place. Another
approach is to include several categories of
youth that are thought to cover (collectively)
the spectrum of youth in a given setting.
For example, one might consider for inclusion
as “proxy’ groups youth in schools, youth
working in the informal sector of the economy
(e.g., street hawkers), or youth working in
low-skill occupations in the formal sector
(e.g., domestic workers, apprentices). Finally,
“special” categories of youth such as homeless
or street children might be considered.
It is to be emphasized, however, that
caution should be exercised in generalizing
the results of surveys for “proxy” sub-groups
of youth. This is because, even collectively,
there is no way to know how well the
behaviors observed across the various “proxy”
groups correspond to behaviors in the general
population of youth.
In this section, sampling schemes for four
data collection approaches for youth are
described : (1) household surveys, (2) school
surveys, (3) workplace surveys, and (4) surveys
of youth with no fixed residence.
Household surveys of youth
When household surveys are to be used
to enumerate youth, a conventional two-stage
cluster sample design is the recommended
sampling approach. Note : this approach
is the same as that proposed for general
population surveys by UNAIDS or in the AIDS
Module of the Demographic and Health
Surveys, [which are reproductive health
surveys conducted on household samples of
women, and sometimes men]. The basic
approach is to take a sample of geographic
areas (used as PSU’s) at the first stage of
sample selection. The second stage would
be to sample a predetermined number of
households from each sample cluster or PSU.
Finally the third stage would be to interview
all male or female respondents (sampling is
done separately by gender) ages 15-19 (or in
whatever age range is used to define “youth”)
found in sample households. The recommended
age categories for sampling youth are “