Start from the decision, not the questionnaire
A KAP survey earns its budget only when it is built around a specific programme decision. "Understand our audience" produces shelf reports. "Should we re-target the breastfeeding campaign at grandmothers" produces a survey whose findings move money.
How we structure it
- Agree the programme decision the results must inform, with the people who will make it.
- Derive the constructs: what knowledge, attitudes and practices actually look like in this context.
- Write items in local language, back translate, and cognitively pretest with real respondents.
- Pilot the full instrument, then lock it.
In Northern Nigeria last year this approach showed that the barrier to facility delivery was not knowledge but perceived cost of transport. The programme changed its voucher design instead of its messaging, and delivery volumes moved.