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Fieldwork teams depart to begin collecting data for the
Belize 2015 MICS. Credit: ©UNICEF Belize/2015 |
Fieldwork will run from the 14th of September to December 2015 in all six districts of Belize with a sample size of 5,232 households. The data being collected is representative not only at the national level but also at the district and urban/rural levels, which is especially important as this level of disaggregation allows detailed and precise determinations of key indicators used for planning and program implementation.
“The statistics obtained from the MICS will provide valuable insight into the living conditions, health and overall wellbeing of men, women and children. The statistics will fill some of the existing data gaps and will also tell us how far we have come in our work towards improving the quality of life for all Belizeans”, says Jacqueline Montique Small, Demographer at the Statistical Institute of Belize.
Two MICS surveys were previously conducted in the country by administering paper questionnaires: one in 2006 and the other in 2011. This time interviewers are collecting data using tablets in what is termed Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI).
Belize signed onto the Millennium Declaration and adopted the World Fit For Children (WFFC) agenda through its National Plan of Action for Children and Adolescents 2004-2015. Accordingly, the Government of Belize undertook to improve conditions for all children and adolescents and to carefully monitor progress towards that end.
The Belize 2015 MICS is seen as an important tool for measuring progress towards key national and international targets as laid out in various development plans. Since the previous MICS, several initiatives have been implemented to further improve the situation of women and children; therefore, the 2015 survey will help measure the effectiveness of these interventions and quantify progress in development made since 2011 – in addition to providing internationally comparable data on the current situation of women and children and acting as a baseline for the new Sustainable Development Goals.
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A member of one of the fieldwork teams crosses a river by walking
on a log to reach a selected household in the Belize 2015 MICS. Credit: ©UNICEF Belize/2015 |
Additional to using the Household Questionnaire, the Questionnaire for Individual Women (age 15-49) and the Questionnaire for Children under Five, the survey is also using the Questionnaire for Individual Men (age 15-49) which will provide detailed data that have been lacking on the situation of men in Belize. Among a multitude of topics, data is being collected on women’s and men’s access to mass media and their use of information/communication technology, as this type of data was last collected during the 2010 Census. The survey is also implementing the module on salt iodization, on which data was last collected during the 2006 MICS.