Preliminary Findings of Andhra Pradesh Health Systems Responsiveness Study-2001

The AP Health Systems Responsiveness Study survey sample was a representative one. The total sample had 53.4% of female and 46.6 % of male representation. 76.2% of our sample belonged to rural settings while 23.8% of our sample belonged to the urban settings. There is a component of definition here that needs to be clarified further. Our target plan was to have a total of 75% rural and 25% urban sample to match with the Census 1990 percent distribution. We had drawn an extra 10% of the sample in order to deal with refusals and other circumstances of non-interview. In addition, maximum refusals were from the urban areas making our rural proportion slightly more than our target sample. NFHS-2 sample had a proportion of 74% of rural and 26% of urban households that were actually interviewed. The composition of male and female respondents is 47% and 53% respectively. The NFHS-2 composition of male and female composition was 50% for each category.

The sex ratio was 1170 females for every 1000 males in the urban areas and 1137 females for every 1000 males in the rural areas. The overall sex ratio of the sample was 1145 females for every 1000 males. The sex ratio of this sample is little different than that of the NFHS sample which was 995 females for every 1000 males in the rural areas and 954 females for every 1000 males in the urban areas. This difference can be attributed to several reasons. First, to be eligible to participate in our survey, a person had to be a resident in that place for at least six months. There is a lot of migration of males to the nearby urban areas during some seasons. Our surveyors had a number of instances in the Telengana and the Rayalseema areas (where the land is dry and not that fertile) where there is a tendency for men to migrate to the coastal areas during the harvesting seasons. This results in these males not being eligible to become respondents for the survey. Second, our survey started in the Telengana region (that has the maximum proportion of Muslims) during the months of Ramazan when many Muslim males travel to Mecca in the Middle East. These people could not participate in the survey. Third, in spite of all the persuasion techniques used by the surveyors, there was a lot of resistance from men in the urban areas to participate in the survey, compared to the females. This resulted in a less number of male respondents compared to the females.

When we look at the percent distribution of our study sample by age groups we find that 4% of the entire sample constitute age category 18-19, 22% age category of 20-29, 26% age category of 30-39, 20% age category of 40-49, 13% age category of 50-59, 11% age category of 60-69 and 4% fall under the 70+ category. We find that there are more females than males in the age category of 20-29 and 30-39 years while there are more number of males in the age categories of 50-59, 60-69 and 70+. The less number of males in the mentioned categories (the economically productive years) may be due to the migration of the males to neighbouring places for agriculture or other economic work.

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