Conduct the survey regarding health issues in your family.
Answers
Answer:
India has been trying to tackle the problem of population through improved use of family planning methods since before the Emergency rattled the political system. Family planning and contraception methods attack the very root of beliefs of several major sections of the Indian society, and hence the issue of population control continues to challenge the nation’s policy makers and implementers.
But until 1992-93 the national census was the only source of statistics, which reported only the growing numbers and not the factors involved. Detailed statistics regarding utilization of family planning measures, reasons for non-use of available methods, types of methods preferred etc were all unaccounted for.
Today the policy makers can say whether it is popular belief, lack of access, lack of awareness or familial disapproval that keep both men and women from implementing family planning measures. All of this is being made possible through extensive sample surveys conducted by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOHFW) called the National Family Health Survey (NFHS).
What is NFHS?
NFHS was started by Government of India in 1992-93 as the first large-scale, multi-round household survey conducted at a national level. It was done in a representative sample of households throughout India and has been conducted thrice since then.
What data does it collect and how?
NFHS was the first survey to collect information on fertility, infant and child mortality, the practice of family planning, maternal and child health, reproductive health, nutrition, anaemia, utilization and quality of health and family planning services.
The International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) Mumbai, as the nodal agency provides coordination and technical guidance for the survey. The survey is conducted through three questionnaires:
Household Questionnaire
Woman’s Questionnaire
Village Questionnaire (for rural areas alone)
The NFHS-3 added men age 15-54 and never married women age 15-49, as well as ever-married women in its survey population unlike the previous surveys. Softer, untouched areas such as perinatal mortality, male involvement in maternal health care, adolescent reproductive health, higher-risk sexual behavior, family life education, safe injections, and knowledge about tuberculosis were covered in this survey. NFHS-3 also set the benchmark by being the first in India to conduct a “population-based HIV prevalence” survey.
The sample size of NFHS-4 is approximately 568,200 households, which is a significant increase from about 109,000 households in NFHS-3. Data is being collected using Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) on mini-notebook computers.