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Third Party Present Measures [message #27611] Mon, 11 September 2023 14:06 Go to next message
nmcco is currently offline  nmcco
Messages: 2
Registered: September 2023
Member
Hello:

I have a question regarding the third party presence variables for a few of the surveys. For Bolivia 2003 (Round 4) there is no "not present" option for the variables v812, v813, v814. They only have the options "yes-listening" and "yes-not listening". Most other surveys for the DHS have the options "no" and "yes", or "no", "yes- listening", and "yes-not listening". The lack of the "no" option makes it seem that there were others present in 100% of interviews for this particular survey. I have also encountered this for Colombia 2004-2005 (Round 4) and Dominican Republic 2002 (Round 4), where the responses for the variables v812, v813, v814 are "yes-not listening" and "yes-listening" but there is no "no " option. How should analysts interpret these cases where there is no "no" option for v812, v813, and v814? I am currently interpreting it as 100% of interviews for this survey had a husband, other men, and adult women (respectively) present. But, this doesn't seem to be plausible.

In a related observation, while looking through the other surveys it appears that El Salvador, Mexico, Tunisia, and Yemen (all years, all rounds) don't have observations for the v812, v813, v814 variables. This isn't necessarily a problem as there isn't a way to make a mistake about it.

Thank you!
Re: Third Party Present Measures [message #27662 is a reply to message #27611] Fri, 15 September 2023 17:35 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Janet-DHS is currently offline  Janet-DHS
Messages: 698
Registered: April 2022
Senior Member
Following is a response from DHS staff member, Tom Pullum:

For the Bolivia 2003 survey, using the IR file I entered (in Stata) "tab v501 v812,m" to look at how the responses about the husband being present varied according to the marital status of the woman. Here is the result:

. tab v501 v812,m

current marital | pres. husband (sec 7)
status | yes - lis yes - not . | Total
--------------------+---------------------------------+----- -----
never married | 5 5,587 8 | 5,600
married | 275 6,890 12 | 7,177
living together | 88 3,355 6 | 3,449
widowed | 1 244 0 | 245
divorced | 0 317 0 | 317
not living together | 0 865 1 | 866
--------------------+---------------------------------+----- -----
Total | 369 17,258 27 | 17,654

We see that almost all of the women who are not currently married have a response "yes-not listening", which does not make sense. Here is the value label for v812:

. label list v812
v812:
0 no
1 yes - listening
2 yes - not listening

The label includes 0 for "no" but there is not a single reported case with 0. It's pretty clear that in this survey the "no" cases that should have been given code 0 were actually assigned to code 2. My guess is that there was confusion between two alternative schemes for coding yes/no types of questions. There are many variables for which 1 is "yes" and 2 is "no", just as there are many questions for which 0 is "no" and 1 is "yes". Apparently the label for v812 was not followed correctly. This is intended to be a 3-category variable and in effect it has just 2 categories. I think "no" and "yes-not listening" were consolidated with code 2.

If your Spanish is better than mine, you may find the relevant question(s) in the questionnaire. There may have been some ambiguity there.

You are right, a few surveys do not have the "listening" variables at all.
Re: Third Party Present Measures [message #28217 is a reply to message #27662] Sat, 02 December 2023 14:18 Go to previous message
nmcco is currently offline  nmcco
Messages: 2
Registered: September 2023
Member
Hi Tom,

Thank you for the helpful reply!

It seems to be recorded well in the other Bolivia surveys, but 2003 doesn't seem to be reliable.

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