KAP Polls for Immunization and Polio Programmes: A Guide to Higher Quality In-person KAP Polls for C4D Managers

"Although conducting a high-quality KAP poll entails a considerable amount of work, this evidence-based approach can be critical in improving outcomes for children."

This tool is a guide for managers responsible for social research related to immunisation programmes, including routine immunisation and polio. It provides guidance on quality standards to help the reader develop and oversee knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) polls, whose purpose is to provide data that will be strategically relevant to communication for development (C4D) and programming. KAP polls examine people's health experiences, including their underlying views and understanding of issues relevant to their health behaviours. The examples in the guide focus on immunisation, though the general principles can be applied to other behavioural areas as well.

The guide is built on the real-world experience of a KAP polling collaboration between the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the Harvard Opinion Research Program (HORP) at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH). Over the course of that collaboration, teams conducted more than a dozen polls across eight polio- and immunisation-priority countries, the findings of which ultimately formed the backbone of the C4D strategies in polio. The learnings from this process focus on challenges posed to communication managers.

With such a user in mind, this guide covers all stages of KAP polls - from design to dissemination - with pragmatic guidance at each step. Building on what has been commonly seen in past KAP studies carried out by UNICEF, the tool provides guidance related to providing oversight, setting standards, and ensuring quality while working with specialised experts, such as interviewers and statisticians. The guide does not go into depth on technical dimensions of the process, instead covering topics at a fairly high level.

One thread running through the guide is the role of theory in conducting a KAP poll. The basic idea of behavioural theory is to provide a working model of all the different factors that can affect whether or not a child gets vaccinated. The guide provides an example of a working behavioural model that was used in the polio programme as the basis to organise research questions and questionnaire items.

Contents include:

• Considering a KAP Poll?
  • What is a KAP poll and what can it do for me?
  • What does it mean for KAP data to be quantitative?
  • What are the advantages of high-quality KAP polls?
  • At what point in my strategic planning process should I conduct a KAP poll?
  • How do I bring in others to get the process started?
  • What are the key steps of the KAP poll process?
• Designing a KAP Poll
  • Before you begin
  • Designing your KAP poll
  • All about sampling
  • Designing your questionnaire
  • What is pre-testing and why is it needed?
• Managing a KAP Poll
  • Choosing and working with a research firm
  • Running your KAP poll
• Making Sense of KAP Data
  • How is the quality of the data set checked?
  • What should the research report include?
  • How do I interpret and use the research findings for C4D and programme strategy?
• Sharing KAP Results
  • How do I present results effectively to others?
  • How do I get buy-in to the results?
  • How do I ensure that the results are used?
  • Completion

The Appendix includes a sample KAP poll questionnaire.