Efforts to tackle child labour in cocoa-growing communities in West Africa often rely on data about children’s involvement in work activities. In this context, accurate measurement of child labour is essential for designing effective interventions and targeting them to areas where prevalence is highest.
However, the way surveys are designed and administered can considerably influence how respondents interpret the questions and report children’s work activities, thereby affecting the survey results. To better understand how different survey design choices influence results, ICI, together with ETH Zurich and the University of Ghana, tested and compared different approaches to collecting information about children’s work activities.
The findings highlight how differences in survey design can influence results and should therefore be carefully considered when designing these surveys and when interpreting and comparing data over time. While the study focuses on child labour data collection in the context of prevalence surveys and impact assessments, some of the insights and practical recommendations may also be relevant for child labour monitoring in the context of a Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation Systems (CLMRS).
This paper presents the research questions and methods used, and summarizes the results from the original research paper: Lefoll, E., E. Asiedu and I. Günther, 2025, The Impact of Survey Design on Child Labour Estimates: Evidence from Rural Ghana. ETH Research Collection, 2025
