Landline penetration is extremely limited in Pakistan at less than 3 percent, whereas 94 percent of households have access to a mobile phone (PSLM 2019-2020). According to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, the market share of the four telecom providers in Pakistan (in terms of active working numbers) are: PMCL Jazz (37.8 percent), Telenor (27.1 percent), CMPAK Zong (22.0 percent), and PTML Ufone (13.1 percent). The market share was used to allocate the sample across providers. For example, 37.8 percent of numbers were randomly chosen from PMCL Jazz. Such an allocation was feasible to make because each of the four telecom providers was assigned a pre-set exchange number followed by an 8-digit mobile number. Despite the high levels of mobile phone access, the 6 percent of the population that does not have access to a mobile phone, likely some of the most disenfranchised, were systematically excluded from our sample. Further, 79 percent of our respondents were men, with 69 percent of these being fathers, 7 percent being grandfathers, and 24 percent being another male relative. This indicates that although 94 percent of households report having access to a mobile device, there is likely gender inequity in terms of phone ownership and use.

Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) was used. Interviewers began the survey process by calling a randomly generated number. Each number was called until the phone was answered, or a maximum of three times. Each call was made at a different time of the day. Once an individual was contacted on their mobile phone, consent was obtained, a screening questionnaire was administered, and a study identification number was randomly generated and assigned to the individual. Data collectors entered participants’ responses into a tablet, which was collected using Survey CTO, which also hosted the electronic questionnaire with automated skip patterns.

Our study population included caregivers in households with at least one child who was 72 months of age or younger. A selected child served as the focus for interview questions based on two stratification criteria to ensure a 50:50 gender split and a 50:50 age group split (children aged 0-35 months and children aged 36-72 months). SurveyCTO was programmed to randomly select an index child who met these criteria in the child roster. Interviewers asked each participant for the province they lived in to facilitate sample allocation across provinces. Interviewers also noted the status of the interview (refused, partially completed, completed) at the end of the survey form. All data collection was monitored by Gallup Pakistan to ensure that the planned allocation of participants across strata was met. Once a target was reached, no further interviews were conducted with participants from that stratum. Of 3,907 individuals contacted, 448 people declined to be interviewed, 438 partially completed the interview, and 3,021 completed the interview in its entirety. Data from Azad Jammu Kashmir (n=104), Islamabad Capital Territory (n=23) and Gilgit Baltistan (n=21) was not representative and was therefore excluded from the study. As such, our final study population contained 2,896 households.

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