The major objectives of the survey were:

• to evaluate the level of clients’ compensation, and 
• assess measures of satisfaction and indicators of voluntarism among sterilized clients.

Samples for the survey were developed from among successfully-interviewed currently-married rural female respondents of the 1985 CPS.  All the respondents who reported that they had been sterilized were included in the sample of less recent tubectomy clients, while the sample of matched cases was constructed by random selection— for each sterilized case included in the tubectomy samples a rural CPS respondent who had the same number of living children and lived in the same cluster.  The third sample comprised the husbands of respondents included in the above two samples.  

Over 90 percent of the respondents were successfully interviewed in the follow-up survey. This was possible because of a good record-keeping system and the careful fieldwork of Mitra and Associates.

Regarding the excellence of Mitra and Associates in conducting the study, Prof. W. Parker Mauldin of the Population Council in his letter to the Executive Director of the firm, mentioned:

“It is a pleasure to work with you and your associates on the Follow-up of Tubectomy Clients and Matched Cases, and to read summaries of the Focus Groups. The high proportion of cases re-interviewed after the passage of about 2.5 years is a testament to good record keeping and careful field work.”

Twenty focus group discussion sessions were conducted for 5 different groups, namely (1) tubectomy focus group, (2) vasectomy focus group, (3) focus group of current users (temporary methods including IUD), (4) non-user focus group (female) and (5) non-user focus group (male).

On a competitive bid, Mitra and Associates was awarded the contract for the study by NIPORT.  The study was funded by World Bank.