Trying harder to reach ‘hard-to-reach’ parents in surveys: collecting data about and from parents who do not co-reside with their children in rural South Africa

Vuyiswa Dlamini, Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies
Gabriela Mejia-Pailles, University of Southampton
Ann M. Berrington, University of Southampton
Victoria Hosegood, University of Southampton

Family-orientated interventions and social policy have the potential to make major contributions to improving child survival, health and development. In rural South African communities, family dispersal over a wide geographical area presents a major challenge to the collection of high quality, detailed longitudinal family data for use in the monitoring and evaluation of family programmes and policies. We present new empirical findings on approaches to collecting and validating parenting and caregiving data from 93 ‘hard-to-reach’ parents who are involved but not living with their biological children (<18 years). Nearly half (n=45) of the parents were successful contacted. The findings suggest a strong differentiation within this group of non-resident parents in which social rather than residential distance is the greatest barrier to participation. Intervention research may benefit from initially screening parents but non co-residence with a child is not a good indicator of interest or potential engagement.