How the survey was done

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The format was an opinion poll based on 10,073 face-to-face interviews with children and young people between the ages of 9 and 17, who are representative of more than 300 million of their peers in the 17 countries and territories that were surveyed.

The survey used the same methodology and questionnaire in all the countries, making for comparable results. UNICEF's East Asia and Pacific Regional Office defined the objectives and recommended and approved both the questionnaire and report formats.

Research International Asia's Thailand office (RIA Thailand) was responsible for coordinating the research. It briefed the 14 local agencies involved and acted as a link between them and UNICEF. RIA Thailand completed recommendations on the questionnaire's contents and format, translating it back into the original language to ensure that meaning was preserved, pilot test of the questionnaire in all 17 countries and territories, checking and monitoring fieldwork and analysing and presenting the regional and country data.

Local research agencies undertook fieldwork and quality control, questionnaire translation, preparation and printing of the survey materials, data entry and editing and transmitting of clean data to RIA Thailand.

The interviews were conducted door-to-door using a probability sample with stratified cluster sampling to ensure that the results were representative. The questionnaires were administered in the child respondents' homes, but without the presence of parents or other third parties.

In most countries the sample size was 500, with a smaller size used in Hong Kong (300) and Macao (200) and a significantly larger size in China (1,900) and Indonesia (1,000). Each survey took an average of 25 to 30 minutes to complete. The survey has an overall average sampling error of plus or minus 1.2 per cent.

The survey was supported by UNICEF country offices in East Asia and the Pacific, the Australian Committee for UNICEF, the Hong Kong Committee for UNICEF, the Korean Committee for UNICEF and UNAIDS.

This information is provided as a contribution to discussion on important issues affecting children. UNICEF Regional offices conducted the polls, analysis and interpretations of the findings. For more information, please contact the regional poll contact person directly.