Chapter 2: The 2003 Children and Families Study

Objectives

As part of efforts to understand the social consequences of large-scale labor migration on Filipino society, the Scalabrini Migration Center (SMC), in partnership with the Episcopal Commission on the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People-CBCP (ECMI)/Apostleship of the Sea-Manila (AOS-Manila) and the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA), conducted the 2003 Children and Families Study, a nationwide research project on the children and families left behind. The launching of the study coincided with the declaration of 2003 as the Year of the OFW Family.

The general objective of the study was to assess how parental absence due to migration affects the well-being of young children left behind. The specific objectives of the study focused on the following areas:

• To determine children's conceptions and perceptions of overseas migration;

• To examine the impact of parental absence on selected aspects of children's well-being (physical development, health status, academic performance, values and spiritual formation, and social/emotional well-being); and

• To identify the factors which help the children cope with the difficulties and opportunities posed by migration.

The 2003 Children and Families Study attempted to overcome the limi-tations of earlier studies. It had a nationwide coverage; it employed pro-bability sampling in the selection of respondents for the survey; it included the children of non-migrants as a comparison for different groups of children of migrants; and it included the children and families of seafarers. Furthermore, the study employed both quantitative (survey) and qualitative (focus group discussions or FGDs) approaches in the collection and analysis of data. When resources allow, follow up studies may be conducted later on which would provide a longitudinal view of the experiences of children and families through time.

The Survey of Children

Young children in the ages 10-12 years were the target respondents for the survey. The children included in the study belonged to families where the parents were together (i.e., as a rough proxy of the parents' marital relationship - if the parents lived together, presumably the marriage was fine), except when one or both parents were working abroad in the case of the children of migrants. This criterion was adopted in order to control for variations in family situations. Such a strategy sharpens the analysis of the consequences of migration, but on the other hand, the analysis excludes children belonging to other types of families - e.g., children in single-parent families (due to marital problems or the death of a parent), children raised by grandparents or other relatives on account of the parents' separation, and children who had a foreign parent. When we refer to the children of migrants in this report, we are referring to the children of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).

The children-respondents were categorized into five groups:

• Children of non-migrants (NM)

• Children of migrant mothers (MM)

• Children of land-based migrant fathers (FL)

• Children of seafarer fathers (FS)

• Children with both parents working abroad (BP)

The study focused on the 10-12 age group because the conditions of young children are good indicators of the kind of care and attention that they receive in the family. Also if the purpose were to examine how children are affected by migration, it makes sense to target specific age groups rather than to cover children of various ages. Pre-adolescents, for example, do not have the same concerns as adolescents. Many factors are at work in adolescence - bodily and psychological changes, expansion of the reference group to peers, etc. whose influences must be isolated from the effects of migration. Each of these groups deserves specific research attention.

In the Philippines, adolescents have been the focus of many studies while young children have not received much attention in research (Alampay-Peña, 2003). Also, their voices are usually not heard in the development of policies and programs that are intended to benefit them.

Selection of Respondents

The use of probability sampling in the selection of respondents entailed various stages and required much preparation. Data from several sources (deployment data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, data on registered OFWs from the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration, and the reports of the Survey of Overseas Filipinos by the National Statistics Office) were used in sampling provinces/areas. The selected areas were:

• Luzon: National Capital Region (Manila, Taguig); Bulacan (Hagonoy, Angat); Cavite (Cavite City, Imus); Laguna (San Pedro, Los Baños),

• Visayas: Negros Occidental (Bacolod City, Binalbagan); Cebu (Cebu City, Liloan)

• Mindanao: Davao del Sur (Davao City, Digos)

Due to resource constraints, the study employed school-based rather than household-based sampling. Within sampled provinces/areas, public and private schools were randomly selected. A total of 132 schools were selected, but only 130 schools (76 public, 54 private) gave permission for the interviews to be conducted. Once the schools were identified, the project carried out pre-screening activities in order to identify the children of non-migrants and the children of migrants. Respondents were then randomly se-lected within each of the five groups.

The study targeted to interview 1,640 children, of whom 1,443 children (88 percent) were actually interviewed. Some of the selected respondents who turned out to be ineligible were not interviewed. Figure 1 presents the number of respondents interviewed in the sample areas. Further information on the distribution of respondents by category are detailed in Table 1.

Field Work

Four research teams were organized to conduct the pre-screening and interviews in the different regions. SMC coordinated the data collection in Luzon. For the other regions, the project linked up with researchers in Colegio San Agustin-Bacolod, the University of the Philippines College Cebu and the Ateneo de Davao University to coordinate the data collection in Visayas and Mindanao.

The preparatory activities - development of the sampling design, communication with the Department of Education officials and officials and teachers of the sampled schools, conducting the pre-screening activities, construction of the sampling frame, developing the instrument, pre-testing questionnaire, the training of interviewers - took place between June and September 2003. Interviews with the children were conducted from October to December 2003, and a few remaining ones were completed in Digos, Davao del Sur in January 2004.

The questionnaire was divided into the following sections: background information (this section was supposed to be filled up by the respondents' teachers); family composition, economic status and gender role divisions; migration, family relationship and socialization; school and academics; health and well-being; social skills and social support; identity, psychological and emotional health; and aspirations. The questionnaires were administered in three languages: Tagalog (which was used in Luzon and Davao del Sur), Cebuano (the language of interview in Cebu) and Hiligaynon (the language of interview in Negros Occidental). Interview time ranged from 20 to 80 minutes (mean completion time was 34.52 minutes).

The Focus Group Discussions

In addition to the survey which focused on young children, the study also sought out the voices and perspectives of other family members as well as workers and volunteers who work with the families left behind. FGDs were conducted for three groups of participants:

• Sons and daughters of OFWs (6 FGDs with sons; 5 FGDs with daughters);

• Husbands and wives of OFWs (3 FGDs with husbands; 5 FGDs with wives, both land-based and seafarers); and

• Staff of government agencies, non-government organizations (NGOs) and the Catholic Church, including volunteers who are working with OFW families (3 FGDs with community workers).

Altogether 23 FGDs were conducted involving participants from Manila, Cavite, Laguna, Bulacan, the Cordillera, Ilocos, Negros Occidental, Cebu, Davao del Sur, Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao and Cagayan de Oro City. Most of the FGDs were carried out in conjunction with the Youth Counseling Workshop conducted by OWWA in selected regions. The staff of OWWA, ECMI and AOS-Manila provided assistance in the recruitment of participants while SMC arranged for facilitators and docu-mentors. Most of the FGDs were carried out between August and November 2003. Three FGDs were completed in January 2004 due to difficulties in arranging the FGDs earlier on. The FGDs ran for 1.5 to three hours. The sessions were tape-recorded and the tapes were transcribed.

The FGDs provided additional data on the experiences and views of older children and caregivers. The discussions with the community workers gave some insights about on-the-ground realities of ministering to the left-behind families. The FGDs brought out the emotional side of labor migration. The survey, on the other hand, provided data that can be measured and can thus give indication on levels and patterns. Taken together, the two methods complement and strengthen the data base on migrant families.

The Report

This is the first report based on the 2003 Children and Families Study. This report provides an overview of the findings of the study's objectives based on the descriptive analysis. The survey data presented here is based on weighted data, i.e., data which have been projected to reflect the distribution of children-respondents in the actual population. In other words, although the data were gathered from 1,443 children of migrants and non-migrants, the weighted data pertain to the children of migrants and non-migrants in the population.

There are plans to undertake further analysis of the data to explore the factors that contribute to the resilience and vulnerabilities of left-behind children and families. This will be the subject of another report.