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Home » Countries » India » Day of birth for children in India (DHS 7) (Missing variable b17)
Day of birth for children in India (DHS 7) [message #25556] Tue, 08 November 2022 16:51 Go to next message
hvs0013 is currently offline  hvs0013
Messages: 11
Registered: April 2022
Member
Hi,

I am facing a question regarding the variable b17 in the birth history for India (DHS -7). The DHS website states:

"Beginning with the DHS-7 questionnaires, (surveys with fieldwork in about 2015 and later), the woman's questionnaire collects the day of birth for all children listed in the birth history (all children of the respondents to the woman's questionnaire) in addition to their month and year of birth."

However, in the the BR file, I only see the month and year of birth. I was wondering if India was an exception and the day of birth was not recorded in the Indian survey. Thank you.



Re: Day of birth for children in India (DHS 7) [message #25563 is a reply to message #25556] Wed, 09 November 2022 13:28 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Bridgette-DHS is currently offline  Bridgette-DHS
Messages: 3199
Registered: February 2013
Senior Member

Following is a response from DHS staff member, Tom Pullum:

You are correct, the NFHS-4 data do not include day of birth, b17. However, this is not a exception to the rule for DHS-7 surveys. If you do "tab v000" you will get "IA6". The "6" means that this survey followed the DHS-6 standard. Many of the early surveys that have "7" as the 5th character in the filenames are actually DHS-6 surveys. Similarly for all rounds of DHS. There is a lag of a couple of years between the beginning of a new phase of DHS, which is determined by the dates of the contract with USAID, and the implementation of the new standards for that phase.

Re: Day of birth for children in India (DHS 7) [message #25565 is a reply to message #25563] Wed, 09 November 2022 14:10 Go to previous messageGo to next message
hvs0013 is currently offline  hvs0013
Messages: 11
Registered: April 2022
Member
Thank you for your response and explanation! What I figure out from this is that the NFHS 4(2015-2016) was conducted in 2015-2016 but followed the past recode structure (NFHS 3). Please let me know if I am incorrect in my interpretation. Thank you.
Re: Day of birth for children in India (DHS 7) [message #25573 is a reply to message #25565] Thu, 10 November 2022 07:47 Go to previous message
Bridgette-DHS is currently offline  Bridgette-DHS
Messages: 3199
Registered: February 2013
Senior Member

Following is a response from DHS staff member, Tom Pullum:

In the successive NFHS's, the third character in v000 is the following:

NFHS-1 (IA23): 2
NFHS-2 (IA42): 3
NFHS-3 (IA52): 5
NFHS-4 (IA74): 6
NFHS-5 (IA7D): 7

In this list, "IA23", for example gives the characters in the file names, such as IAPR23FL.dta. The NFHS-1 followed the core documentation for DHS-2, that is, the second phase of The DHS Program, and so on. There is only a loose correspondence between the numbering of the NFHS's (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), the 5th character in the file names (2, 4, 5, 7, 7) and the phase of DHS (2, 3, 5, 6, 7). The NFHS-4 and -5 designs were very similar--but as you noted, -5 includes b17 and -4 does not. There would be some other differences because of the different coding manuals.
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