Volume 17 - Article 13 | Pages 369–388
The implications of long term community involvement for the production and circulation of population knowledge
By Sangeetha Madhavan, Mark Collinson, Nicholas W. Townsend, Kathleen Kahn, Stephen Tollman
Abstract
Demographic surveillance systems (DSS) depend on community acceptance and involvement to produce high quality longitudinal data. Ensuring community support also exposes power relations usually concealed in the research process. We discuss the Agincourt Health and Demographic Surveillance System in South Africa to argue that: 1) long-term presence and community involvement contribute to high response rates and data quality, 2) to maintain community support the project must demonstrate its usefulness, 3) reporting to community members provides valuable checks on the local relevance and comprehension of questions, and 4) community opinion can modify both wording and content of research questions.
Author's Affiliation
- Sangeetha Madhavan - University of Maryland, United States of America EMAIL
- Mark Collinson - University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa EMAIL
- Nicholas W. Townsend - Brown University, United States of America EMAIL
- Kathleen Kahn - University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa EMAIL
- Stephen Tollman - University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa EMAIL
Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research
The age pattern of increases in mortality affected by HIV: Bayesian fit of the Heligman-Pollard Model to data from the Agincourt HDSS field site in rural northeast South Africa
Volume 29 - Article 39
Household structure vs. composition: Understanding gendered effects on educational progress in rural South Africa
Volume 37 - Article 59
The dynamic role of household structure on under-5 mortality in southern and eastern sub-Saharan Africa
Volume 49 - Article 11
“One hand does not bring up a child:” Child fostering among single mothers in Nairobi slums
Volume 46 - Article 30
Measuring extended families over time in informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya: Retention and data consistency in a two-round survey
Volume 38 - Article 44
Decomposing changes in household measures: Household size and services in South Africa, 1994–2012
Volume 37 - Article 39
Human capital on the move: Education as a determinant of internal migration in selected INDEPTH surveillance populations in Africa
Volume 34 - Article 30
Working with teams of "insiders": Qualitative approaches to data collection in the Global South
Volume 32 - Article 12
Most recent similar articles in Demographic Research
Racial classification as a multistate process
Volume 50 - Article 17
| Keywords:
Brazil,
demography,
increments to life,
life expectancy,
life table,
mortality,
multistate,
race/ethnicity
The big decline: Lowest-low fertility in Uruguay (2016–2021)
Volume 50 - Article 16
| Keywords:
adolescent fertility,
birth order,
fertility,
Latin America,
ultra-low fertility,
Uruguay
Cohort fertility of immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union
Volume 50 - Article 13
| Keywords:
age at first birth,
assimilation,
cohort analysis,
fertility,
immigration,
parity,
religiosity
Ageing and diversity: Inequalities in longevity and health in low-mortality countries
Volume 50 - Article 12
| Keywords:
aging,
health,
lifespan inequality,
longevity,
old-age threshold,
regional differences,
socioeconomic status
Measuring short-term mobility patterns in North America using Facebook advertising data, with an application to adjusting COVID-19 mortality rates
Volume 50 - Article 10
| Keywords:
COVID-19,
data collection,
Facebook,
mortality,
North America,
short-term mobility
Cited References: 18
Download to Citation Manager
PubMed
Google Scholar