| Binary Variables Expanded to Six Categories [message #1598] |
Sun, 16 March 2014 16:55  |
amira.elshal.1@city.ac.uk
Messages: 52
Registered: April 2013
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Senior Member |
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Dear Sirs,
I am working on the Individual Recode files of Egypt's EDHS 2000 and 2008 using Stata.
I understand that a variable such as who attended at the delivery (m3) is coded by DHS as a set of binary variables (m3a, m3b, etc.)
for each possible option (doctor, nurse/midwife, etc.). What I do NOT understand is why m3a is expanded into m3a_1, m3a_2,...m3a_6. Is that to deal with the case of a woman giving birth to 6 children for example?
Thank you.
Amira
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| Re: Binary Variables Expanded to Six Categories [message #1607 is a reply to message #1598] |
Mon, 17 March 2014 14:17  |
Reduced-For(u)m
Messages: 292
Registered: March 2013
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Senior Member |
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Amira,
The _1, _2.... are in fact for different children - all children born within the last 3/5 years. From the recode manual (https://www.dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/DHSG4/Recode4DHS.pdf)
The maternity history contains up to six entries, relating to births in the three/five years preceding interview. The use of three/five years is country specific. The entries are in reverse order, such that the first entry relates to the last birth in the last three/five years. There is an entry for all children born in the last three/five years including all twins. The period of three/five years includes months 0 to 35/59 prior to the interview, with month 0 being the month of interview. If there are more than six births in the last three/five years then only the last six are included in the maternity history. Each of the following variables, duration of breastfeeding (M5), duration of postpartum amenorrhea (M7) and duration of postpartum abstinence (M9) may have several cases coded 97 "Inconsistent" since the duration of breastfeeding, amenorrhea or abstinence was impossible in the interval between the birth and the following birth or date of interview if the most recent birth (only the date of interview in the case of breastfeeding).
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| Re: Binary Variables Expanded to Six Categories [message #1629 is a reply to message #1623] |
Wed, 19 March 2014 12:57 |
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user-rhs
Messages: 132
Registered: December 2013
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Senior Member |
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Amira,
I would strongly advise you to read the DHS Recode Manual (link: https://www.dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/DHSG4/Recode6_DHS_22Marc h2013_DHSG4.pdf) and the questionnaires at the end of the DHS Final Report for Egypt to familiarize yourself with the data. This is what I personally do whenever I'm stumped about what variable to use or the correct way to use a variable I'm interested in. There is a lot of good information in there you can use: what questions were asked, how were they stored in the dataset, what the _1, _2, _3 in a variable name mean, why some variables have missing values for all observations, etc.
The answer to your question is answered in the DHS Recode Manual.
RHS
NB. FYI, typically the antenatal and postnatal care variables are asked only of the most recent birth, instead of ALL of the births in the last 5 years presumably to improve the reliability of the response and minimize recall bias.
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