SChEMaC 2020 (Survey on Children, Early Marriage and Covid-19) is a follow-up survey to CiMLAS, conducted in June 2020 with a subsample of CiMLAS respondents. SChEMaC was designed to investigate how the Covid-19 pandemic and school closures in Bangladesh are affecting children, in particular children’s education, parents' aspirations regarding their children, and any steps taken towards the marriage of adolescent girls.

Interviews were conducted by telephone with 498 women in 23 districts in Bangladesh who all had at least one unmarried daughter aged between 9 and 24 years. SChEMaC, combined with CiMLAS, constitutes a unique panel dataset with detailed information on marriages, engagements, and any marriage-related initiatives relating to respondents’ daughters between June 2018 and June 2020. The combined dataset consists of a field survey conducted in June 2018, and telephone interviews conducted in November 2018, May 2019 and in June 2020, immediately after the relaxation of the Covid-19 lockdown in Bangladesh.

The survey included questions on the economic effects of the lockdown, children's schooling and time use, marriage of adolescent daughters and questions on attitudes towards early marriage. All respondents were previously included in an information intervention on child marriage law conducted during the CiMLAS survey in June 2018.

The survey was conducted by the University of Kent and Malaya University in collaboration with DATA, Bangladesh (Data Analysis and Technical Assistance).

See also a description of the survey on the IPA RECOVR Hub.