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Perinatal mortality [message #26990] Wed, 07 June 2023 02:08 Go to next message
Koray is currently offline  Koray
Messages: 11
Registered: June 2023
Member
I wish to calculate perinatal mortality using the Liberia's 2007 data set. but the calendar (vcal_len) data is not available. Also, how do I calculate the mother's age at birth. using int((b3 - v011)/12) return negative values. Please help.
Re: Perinatal mortality [message #27005 is a reply to message #26990] Thu, 08 June 2023 13:35 Go to previous message
Janet-DHS is currently offline  Janet-DHS
Messages: 888
Registered: April 2022
Senior Member
Following is a response from DHS staff member, Tom Pullum:

I just looked at the final report on this survey. Neonatal mortality is described in Table 8.4, which has some notes and there is some discussion in the text. You are right, there was no contraceptive calendar and there are no vcal variables in this survey. Using "lookfor preg" and "lookfor stillbirth" I found that the relevant special variables are s234*. I entered this line:

tab s234m s234y [iweight=v005/1000000] if v008-s234cmc<=60 & s234m<=12

and I get 45.6 weighted stillbirths , which rounds to 46 stillbirths in the past 5 years. According to Table 8.4, there were 81 stillbirths. There appear to be 81-46=35 more stillbirths somewhere in the data. I don't know where they are.

DHS surveys have included many different strategies to get the information that would be in a calendar or a pregnancy history WITHOUT using a calendar or a pregnancy history. All of these strategies involve non-standard questions and variables and programming. I can't pursue further what may have been done in this survey. Fortunately, because of the importance of identifying stillbirths, beginning with DHS-8, the surveys now routinely include pregnancy histories.

Regarding your second question, about the mother's age (in years) at birth, your calculation is correct. You won't get any negative values, but there can be births before age 15. Those may appear as negative values when you recode into age intervals. Standard age intervals begin with age 15, but the files often include a few births at 14 or even earlier.
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