MICS TESTS NEW APPROACHES TO MEASURING ADOLESCENT MENTAL HEALTH, CHILDREN'S TIME USE AND GENDER NORMS

20 September 2022

Methodological work responds to emerging data needs to understand children’s lives and their wellbeing

The MICS Programme recently conducted a field test of new tools to measure adolescent mental health, children’s time use and gender norms regarding the allocation of time to unpaid work. The MICS programme’s methodological work aims at developing and assessing the readiness of new household survey instruments before making them available for use by National Statistical Offices and government agencies.

The field test took place in the Mutare district of Eastern Zimbabwe and was implemented in close collaboration with Zimbabwe’s National Statistics Agency (ZimStat) and UNICEF Zimbabwe. A team of 10 interviewers was trained and deployed to interview households with adolescents aged between 15 and 19 years. The team interviewed 250 adolescents and over 100 caregivers across urban, peri-urban and rural locations. In addition, cognitive interviews were administered to a subset of respondents following the main interview to assess whether select questions were understood as intended.

Three survey modules were tested in the exercise, each measuring a different topic relevant to adolescents’ experiences. The modules were at different stages of development prior to the MICS field test and the objectives of the testing for each of the modules in Zimbabwe varied accordingly.

For more information about this field test, please refer to our methodological work page