| Re: Merging children in IR with children in PR [message #28840 is a reply to message #28802] |
Mon, 18 March 2024 08:07  |
Bridgette-DHS
Messages: 3150
Registered: February 2013
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Senior Member |
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Following is a response from Senior DHS staff member, Tom Pullum:
In other forum posts we have recommended that you do such merges survey-by-survey. Your problem is that v000 (or hv000) is not a unique identifier for the survey.
The Senegal surveys illustrate the problem, but there are other countries for which 2 (and sometimes even 3) successive surveys have the same value of v000. v000 is 3-character string consisting of the 2-character country code plus the number of the coding manual for the survey. If the 2nd character is "6", for example, that will match with the 5th character in the filename (for example the "6" in "SNPR6D" but it will also match with the "6" in "SNPR6I", etc.
I wish that DHS recode files included a truly unique identifier for survey, but they do not. Usually, v000 serves the purpose, but not always, as you have found out. You need to do these merges survey-by-survey OR you need to add more columns to v000 OR you need to add a new variable (of your own design) that serves the purpose.
Note that the 6th character in the file name could help, but it is the version number and can change if the file is updated with some corrections.
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