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Home » Topics » Service Provision Assessment (SPA) » Question about variables starting with "q" and "c" (SPA variable names)
Question about variables starting with "q" and "c" [message #23111] Wed, 14 July 2021 14:47 Go to next message
Specialkk is currently offline  Specialkk
Messages: 3
Registered: July 2021
Member
Hello. I'm looking at the SPA Facility Survey for Senegal 2017, /SNFC7ZDTSP/SNFC7ZFLSP.DTA" and am wondering about the q variables versus the c variables. For example, the survey has c908_1 fo fever reducing and pain medicine as well as q908_1. Are these the same? Should we be counting both the c and q variables for determining the presence of fever reducing and pain medicines?

Thanks for your help.
Kajal
Re: Question about variables starting with "q" and "c" [message #23127 is a reply to message #23111] Mon, 19 July 2021 09:05 Go to previous message
SaraDHS is currently offline  SaraDHS
Messages: 44
Registered: December 2020
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Hi Kajal,

In the Senegal continuous surveys, health huts, or "cases de santé" are treated separately from all the other types of health facilities, since they are more a part of the community health system and tend to have a limited set of service availability. For example, in the final reports, their information is not included in each clinical area focused chapter, but in a separate "situation des cases de santé" in Chapter 12. This same separation is reflected in the dataset, where the c variables include data from the case de santé facilities, and the q variables include data from all other kinds of facilities. If you cross-tab facility type and the c or q variables, you'll see this distinction.

So for 908_1, the question is the same for both c908_1 and q908_1, the different variables just hold the responses for different types of facilities. Which one you would use, or whether you would use a combination, would depend on what types of facilities you want to include in your analysis.

I hope that's helpful.

Best,
Sara


Sara Riese, PhD Senior Demographic and Health Researcher, DHS Program
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