Moving beyond the household: innovations in data collection on kinship

Sangeetha Madhavan, University of Maryland
Shelley Clark, McGill University
Donatien Beguy, African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC)
Caroline W. Kabiru, African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC)
Mark Gross, University of Maryland

It has long been established that the household is an insufficient indicator of social context in demographic research. However, it continues to be the primary means of data collection in surveys which, in turn, results in an incomplete understanding of the social context of fertility, mortality, and health. To address this problem, we have developed a new survey instrument to collect kinship support data for single mothers and their children in slum communities in Nairobi, Kenya. It is unique in three important ways: 1) distinguishes theoretical from practical kin; 2) incorporates geo-spatial measures of kin and 3) collects data from the perspective of children. Our primary goal in this paper is to compare the type of data collected with the KST with data from standard household rosters. We pay particular attention to data quality, utility of the data and the strengths and weaknesses of the KST instrument and its administration.