Home » Topics » Mortality » Pregnancy duration from vcal_1 (India, IAKR7EFL.DTA, NFHS-5 2019-2021)
| Pregnancy duration from vcal_1 [message #30298] |
Wed, 30 October 2024 12:04  |
rghosh
Messages: 1
Registered: October 2024
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Member |
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India, IAKR7EFL.DTA, NFHS-5 2019-2021
I am interested to identify all live and stillbirths that occurred in the 5 years prior to the month of the survey. I have merged and working with the vcal_1 variable from the birth history because that is the only way to at least get the month of pregnancy preceding each birth. In other words, I would like to obtain all births and the corresponding gestational age at birth. I read in another post about using Ps for the Ts only, but there are Bs too in vcal_1.
My first question, is using the vcal_1 to obtain pregnancy duration the right approach.
Second, in the vcal_1 there are gaps on the very left. I am interpreting each space as the difference between the very last month of survey and the month when a participant was interviewed. So, if there are 4 spaces on the left of the very first letter/number in vcal_1 for participant 1, that means she was interviewed on the 5th last months of NFHS-5 survey.
Third, since there are more characters than 60 in vcal_1, excluding spaces, I am truncating at 59 to identify all the births and stillbirths based on B or T, respectively. Next, I plan to count the Ps following the B and T to get the gestational month of the corresponding pregnancy. If I understand the data correctly, this should give me the births and the gestational age for all births in the 5 years preceding the month of the survey.
Fourth, I am lost when I see the bord and bidx variables and compare them with the livebirths identified using vcal_1. I am aware that there is a direct variable s234 that identifies the stillbirths but I want to get the gest. age as well.
Any suggestion will be greatly appreciated.
Best regards
Rakesh
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| Re: Pregnancy duration from vcal_1 [message #30310 is a reply to message #30298] |
Thu, 31 October 2024 17:21  |
Janet-DHS
Messages: 893
Registered: April 2022
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Senior Member |
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Following is a response from DHS staff member, Tom Pullum:
Table 6.15 in the NFHS-5 final report is supposed to cover what you want. In August 2022 I wrote a Stata program to construct that table, but was unsuccessful. I just updated that program for the current version of the data file (Attached). In 2022 I checked with other DHS staff, including Trevor Croft, and we are simply unable to match Table 6.15.
The program shows how to read the calendar variable, vcal_1, and combine it with s234. It refers to outcomes with the letters B and T, and also M (miscarriages), A (abortions), and S (stillbirths). What you want to do makes sense, and I think the program will help you do it, but if you proceed you will find inconsistencies that may reflect poorly on the quality of the calendar data in this survey.
In general, a stillbirth in the calendar is a T preceded by 6 or more months with a P.
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