There is increasing recognition within the international aid community that improving the health of poor people across the world depends upon adequate understanding of the socio-cultural and economic aspects of the context in which public health programmes are implemented. Such information has typically been gathered through various types of cross-sectional surveys, the most popular and widely used being the knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) survey, also called the knowledge, attitude, behaviour and practice (KABP) survey (Green 2001, Hausmann-Muela et al. 2003, Manderson and Aaby 1992, Nichter 2008:6-7).

The KAP survey tradition was first born in the field of family planning and population studies in the 1950s. KAP surveys were designed to measure the extent to which an obvious hostility to the idea and organisation of family planning existed among different populations, and to provide information on the knowledge, attitudes, and practices in family planning that could be used for programme purposes around the world (Cleland 1973, Ratcliffe 1976). In the 1960s and 1970s, KAP surveys began to be utilised for understanding family planning perspectives in Africa (Schopper et al. 1993). Around the same time, the amount of studies on community perspectives and human behaviour grew rapidly in response to the needs of the primary health care approach adopted by international aid organisations. Hence KAP surveys established their place among the methodologies used to investigate health behaviour, and today they continue to be widely