Comparison of Survey Sampling Methods for Estimation of Vaccination Coverage in an Urban Setup of Assam, India

Background: Immunization averts a large number of children in each year. The burden of vaccine preventable diseases remains high in developing countries compared to developed countries. To overcome from this burden different types of immunization programs have been implemented. For better immunization coverage in developing countries, considerable progress is to be made to improve the knowledge and awareness regarding importance of vaccines. In this study a compara-tive study of immunization coverage under two sampling methods has been performed. Methods: In this study variance and design effect of proportion of children vaccinated against different types of vaccines (BCG, OPV, DPT, Hepatitis B, Hib, Measles and MMR) are estimated under two stage (30 × 30) cluster and systematic sampling for comparison of these two survey sampling methods. Also the homogeneity of clusters has been tested by using chi-square test. Results: It is observed that BCG, OPV and DPT vaccination coverage is more than 90% whereas Hepatitis B, Measles, Hib and MMR vaccination coverage is between 50% - 64% only. Here systematic random sampling is more complicated than two stage (30 × 30) cluster sampling. Also the result shows that the clusters are homogeneous with respect to proportion of children vaccinated. Conclusion: There is no significant difference between the two survey methodologies regarding the point estimation of vaccination coverage but estimation of variances of vaccination coverage is less in two stage (30 × 30) cluster sampling than that of the systematic sampling. Also the clusters are homogeneous. Very less improvement has been observed in case of fully vaccination coverage than the previous study. From the study it can be said that two stage (30 × 30) cluster sampling will be preferred to systematic sampling and simple random sampling method.