Crude Birth Rate (cont.)
Exercise
The Crude Birth Rate is normally calculated from vital registration and census data but in places where vital registration is not well developed (which is many!) it may have to be estimated from a survey, although this is far from ideal.
Write some notes on how the Crude Birth Rate would be estimated by a survey. Check the answer after making your notes.
To estimate the Crude Birth Rate from a survey you would need very careful sampling to ensure that a random sample of households is selected – not a sample biased towards those containing children or women of childbearing age. You would need to list all household members (but not necessarily their ages), including non-relatives, and also enquire about births to the members in the last year, even if those babies had since died or left the household. You would also ask about deaths in the last year to improve your estimates of population size – these people would count for half a person-year. You might also ask about length of residence in the household.
From all these questions you could estimate numerator and denominator material, which would be summed across all households. Weighting would be very important to account for non-sampled households and persons not living in households – perhaps living in institutions or travelling etc.
From all these questions you could estimate numerator and denominator material, which would be summed across all households. Weighting would be very important to account for non-sampled households and persons not living in households – perhaps living in institutions or travelling etc.