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

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