Survey ID Number
EGY_2013_SYP_v01_M
Title
Survey of Young People 2013-2014
Abstract
SYPE 2013-2014 IS A PANEL DATA SET WITH SYPE 2009
The five years that have passed since the Population Council's Survey of Young People in Egypt of 2009 (SYPE 2009) have proved to be a tumultuous period for the country. The year 2011 marked a historic year for Egyptian youth, as young people from around the country took an active role in the January 25 revolution.
Through their activism in early 2011, Egypt's young revolutionaries gained a platform to denounce their social and political marginalization, and demand their rights to freedom, justice, equality, and opportunity.
This unprecedented voice for Egypt's youth pointed a national spotlight on many of the challenges that were found in the 2009 SYPE, including an educational system unresponsive to youth needs, difficult employment conditions, low civic and political engagement, and a social environment that denies youth access to essential information about their transition to adulthood.
Since 2011, Egypt has undergone several political fluctuations and changes of power, with civil unrest and continued protests marking many events during the transition. Furthermore, the past four years have proven costly to Egypt's economic well-being and the labor market. Post-revolutionary political instability has resulted in the widespread divestment of foreign-owned firms, the declining value of the Egyptian pound, and a looming debt crisis the Egyptian state is still struggling to avoid. The tumultuous climate has resulted in an enormous drop in revenues for particular economic sectors, such as tourism. Moreover, the return of large numbers of migrants from Libya and other countries in the region affected by the “Arab Spring” has also negatively affected the Egyptian labor market.
This post-revolutionary economic stagnation is expected to have resulted in a steady deterioration of job quality and increasing employment informality, in the context of labor market conditions that were already difficult for young entrants. Such economic challenges could not come at a worse time for Egypt's youth.
Like other countries in the region, Egypt is currently experiencing a demographic “youth bulge,” meaning that the population of young people is significantly larger than other age groups. Although more highly educated than previous generations, this population of young people has struggled to achieve economic stability. Even prior to the 2011 uprisings, Egypt's youth constituted an estimated 90% of the country's unemployed.
It is therefore vital to question how Egypt's youth are now faring in a significantly more unfavorable economic climate, and whether they are able to access the professional opportunities needed to work toward economic independence and complete key life transitions such as getting married and starting a family. At the same time, the transitional period may have opened up new opportunities to youth in other areas of life, most notably deeper engagement with media, politics, and civic life. Such questions regarding youth employment and civic participation in the current tumultuous era, along with potential changes in the institutions and decisions that shape the transition to adulthood, such as health and access to health care, quality of education, migration, marriage, and youth attitudes and life outlooks, are what this report seeks to better understand.
The 2009 Survey of Young People in Egypt (SYPE) was fielded in May 2009 and collected data on several key areas of interest to youth, including education, employment, migration, health, family formation, social issues, and civic and political participation. In order to observe how young people have been faring during the transition period in Egypt in comparison to 2009, the Population Council designed the second wave of SYPE in 2014, which re-interviewed the same sample of young people who were interviewed in 2009. This yields a panel data set that spans the periods before and after the January 25, 2011 revolution, and that is nationally representative for both time periods.
Questionnaires
Questionnaire design
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The 2013-2014 SYPE questionnaire is based primarily on the 2009 survey, which was developed using qualitative data from focus group discussions and interviews with young people that determined the issues that were important to youth. In addition, the Council team consulted with different partners and research experts in each of the topics covered in the survey and completed an extensive overview of literature to further refine the 2009 questionnaire. In its semi-final stage, pretesting in selected PSUs in the Qalyubia, Cairo, and Giza governorates in March of 2009 helped the team further refine the survey before commencing nationwide data collection.
The 2009 survey consisted of three questionnaires:
- A household questionnaire,
- An individual questionnaire focused on the respondent, and
- A community-level questionnaire. The 2009 community-level questionnaire was used to assess characteristics of the subject's local community. This questionnaire was not administered as part of the 2014 SYPE due to budget constraints.
The household questionnaire assessed the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the subject's household, with the head of the household or an adult in the household interviewed for this section.
The 2009 individual questionnaire consisted of six versions designed specifically for different age groups and genders: males aged 10-14, females aged 10-14, males aged 15-21, females aged 15-21, males aged 22-29, and females aged 22-29. In 2014, The SYPE team decided to design one all-inclusive version of the questionnaire using skip patterns whenever needed. Individual questionnaires for both rounds of SYPE covered the following key areas: education, work, family formation, health, migration, and civic and political participation.
In late 2012 and early 2013, the Population Council team began updating the SYPE 2009 household and individual questionnaires in consultation with several partners and frequent SYPE users. In April of 2013, the Population Council team held several consultative meetings with experts in the fields covered by the different SYPE modules, SYPE partners and donors, and officials from relevant ministries to get additional feedback on the contents of each module of the updated version of the survey. These meetings significantly improved the design of the questionnaire.
The result is a more comprehensive version of these two questionnaires. The SYPE 2014 household questionnaire now includes additional information on migration, remittances, and household income and transfers. The SYPE 2014 individual questionnaire also added questions that cover new issues emerging since the January 25, 2011 revolution, especially in relation to the civic engagement module, which focuses on four areas: civic and political participation, community values, gender role attitudes, and religiosity. The health, violence, risk, and safety module has been significantly updated as well to gain a broad picture of how youth's safety has changed since 2009, including exposure to health hazards, harassment, and physical violence. In early August, the updated 2014 SYPE questionnaires were submitted to CAPMAS for legal approval, which was granted shortly after. Furthermore, as was the case in 2009, the 2014 SYPE study was approved by the Population Council's Institutional Review Board (IRB) prior to the commencement of fieldwork. The IRB reviews research involving human subjects to ensure that participants in such fieldwork are treated ethically and that participation does not compromise the participant's safety or well-being. This is especially important when a study involves minors, which is the case with SYPE.
In June of 2013, a two-day pretesting of the full household and individual questionnaires was conducted. This pretesting included 60 households in the urban and slum areas of El-Sayeda Zeinab and Abdeen districts of Cairo. Pretesting helped the Council determine the expected duration of the full interview and identify problematic questions and misleading skip patterns in the questionnaires, which were then modified accordingly.