Vital registration in Indonesia : a study of the completeness and behavioral determinants of reporting of births and deaths

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1981

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Gardiner, P. T.

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Abstract

While many studies of deficient registration systems have tended to emphasize organizational and methodological problems, it should be clear that, ultimately, registration is a behavioral phenomenon, measurable at the level of the individual or household and reflected in whether or not registration of a particular vital event is actually carried out. On a more aggregate level one can deal with the geographically defined registration units to see how differences between such units are related to the overall performance of the registration system within them. This thesis examines some aspects of registration behavior for births and deaths, at both the individual and aggregate levels, within a sample of villages in Indonesia, drawing on the results of a three-year Sample Vital Registration Project caried out by the Indonesian Central Bureau of Statistics. The impetus for the analysis came from the observation that the completeness of registration varied extensively among different groups of villages and that these differences were not always in expected directions, the prime example being the relatively poor performance of urban Project Areas relative to a number of those in rural parts of the country. Drawing on the limited literature on reasons for non-registration and on Indonesian experience, a framework is developed for studying registration behavior. The analysis then draws on the results of a series of surveys designed to specifically study knowledge of, attitudes toward, and practice of registration in these areas. Broadly, these results suggested that, like registration quality, perceptions and attitudes related to registration also varied between the different Project Areas and, in certain circumstances, within Project Areas in terms of registration behavior. It is suggested that the nature of social organization and communication about registration and about vital events within individual villages was an important factor in conditioning these perceptions and attitudes and that it was the relatively stronger social and ideological ties between village officials and the general population in some of the rural areas that helped explain why some of these areas performed as well as they did.

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Thesis (PhD)

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