The Young Lives project is a 15-year longitudinal study on child poverty carried out in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam. In each of the countries, 2000 index children aged around one year and 1000 children aged around eight-years are surveyed. (http://www.younglives.org.uk) (Tuan et al., 2003).
Attrition in longitudinal study results in diminishing numbers of respondents over time. Attrition of Young Lives children will occur when the children die, when they or their caregivers decide to withdraw from the study, or when the children move and their new location cannot be ascertained, even after a thorough follow-up process. In order to maintain adequate observations to obtain significant statistical power of the study, it is imperative to develop an effective tracking process for the YL study, which aims to maximise respondent follow-up.
YL Vietnam team perceived the priority and importance of the tracking. Therefore it has set up its own system to monitor tracking right after completion of fieldwork in phase I. The system was a combination of 2 approaches: direct contact with index families via post as well as reports from CPFC (Ministry of children and families) collaborators at sentinel sites of RTCCD.
However, to identify children who were likely to be available for the next survey, and to check the accuracy of the children and their families’ addresses and general information, a tracking survey across the four countries was done before round 2 started. In Vietnam, the tracking fieldwork was implemented from July to Sept 04, visiting all 3000 YL children.