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Re: Which DHS File should I use? [message #19717 is a reply to message #19716] Wed, 05 August 2020 08:31 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
Bridgette-DHS is currently offline  Bridgette-DHS
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Registered: February 2013
Senior Member

Following is a response from DHS Research & Data Analysis Director, Tom Pullum:

The survival of a child, and whether a living child is stunted, etc., are characteristics of the child. Child survival is indicated by b5 in the KR or BR file. Stunting, etc. is calculated from hw70-hw72 in the KR file because it is only available for (surviving) children age 0-4. It can also be calculated from hc70-hc72, in the PR file. The PR file includes all children age 0-4 identified in the household survey. The PR file includes anthropometry for some children who are not in the KR file. The KR file includes those children in the PR file whose mother was alive and in the same household.

To get a rate you have to pool the survival information about, say all the children in urban areas and all the children in rural areas. A rate is not multivariate. DHS reports include child mortality rates for sub groups, and that is done by calculating the mortality rate over and over within each sub group. Similarly, the percentage stunted is calculated within subgroups.

For multivariate analysis you can just work with a binary (0 or 1) outcome--for survival or stunting, for example, and logit regression. That's what I would recommend.

If you want to look at change between two surveys in the same country, or you want to look at differences between two surveys, you can put them into the same data file, but have codes such as survey=1 and survey=2 when you want to describe or test a difference. This is appending, not merging.
 
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