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Home » Topics » General » Inquire about variables (Inquiry on the Scope of Variable V208 in the PDHS 2017-2018 Dataset and Ever breastfed recently delivered children)
Inquire about variables [message #30025] Thu, 12 September 2024 17:07 Go to next message
Noorulain is currently offline  Noorulain
Messages: 3
Registered: August 2024
Member
using the Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (PDHS) 2017-2018 dataset.

I would like to request clarification on the specific variables related to breastfeeding:

1) Could you kindly indicate which variable corresponds to children who have ever been breastfed in last 5 years?
2) Additionally, I am looking for the variable that specifically refers to children from the most recent birth who have ever been breastfed in last 5 years.
3) Does V208 include both live births and stillbirths, or does it only count live births?

NOTE:
The outcome/Dependent variable of my Analysis is Early initiation of breastfeeding coded by M34_1
Re: Inquire about variables [message #30082 is a reply to message #30025] Fri, 20 September 2024 11:02 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Janet-DHS is currently offline  Janet-DHS
Messages: 880
Registered: April 2022
Senior Member
Following is a response from DHS staff member, Tom Pullum:
In the KR file, the cases are live births in the past 5 years, whether or not the child was still alive at the time of the survey. The variable m4, "Duration of breastfeeding", has a value for each child in the KR file. Here are the codes for m4:
. label list M4

M4:

          93 ever breastfed, not currently breastfeeding
          94 never breastfed
          95 still breastfeeding
          96 breastfed until died
          97 inconsistent
          98 don't know

In this survey, the only codes that actually appear are 93, 94, and 95. Here are the unweighted frequencies:
. tab m4 bidx

          duration of |                  birth column number

        breastfeeding |         1          2          3          4          5 |     Total

----------------------+-------------------------------------------------------+----------

ever breastfed, not c |     3,994      3,419        637         47          2 |     8,099

      never breastfed |       368        248         47          7          0 |       670

  still breastfeeding |     3,925          0          0          0          0 |     3,925

----------------------+-------------------------------------------------------+----------
                Total |     8,287      3,667        684         54          2 |    12,694
 

Thus, of the 8287 children who are the most recent birth in the past 5 years, only 368 were never breastfed. You can construct a recode as follows:

gen never_breastfed=0
replace never_breastfed=1 if m4==94

Children with never_breastfed=0 and bidx=1 with be the group you are asking about in 2).

Note that children who died very soon after birth are likely to have never been breastfed.

The children in the KR an BR files are all live births. There are no stillbirths in these files. The v2* variables that refer to numbers of children are counts of live births.
Re: Inquire about variables [message #30149 is a reply to message #30082] Fri, 04 October 2024 04:20 Go to previous message
Anonymous
So what about starting breastfeeding early in your most recent birth?
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