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mean and median duration of breastfeeding [message #378]

Thu, 02 May 2013 09:56

Chamberlain
Messages: 2
Registered: May 2013
Location: United Kingdom

Member

Further, I am writing to request for help to estimate mean and median duration of breastfeeding, postpartum amenorrhoea and insusceptibility, preferably using the lifetable. I would like to examine the patterns by age groups and relate them to contraception adoption. Postpartum variables are not borken down by age and are not readily available in DHS reports, I would appreciate if you could suggest the Stata/spss lifetable commands for computation of the variable or something similar. I have tried to estimate using the Prevalence /Incidence method in SPSS but I am getting estimates which are higher than DHS estimates and some of them implausible for the age group 15-19.

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Re: mean and median duration of breastfeeding [message #465 is a reply to message #378]

Wed, 22 May 2013 12:39

Bridgette-DHS
Messages: 3214
Registered: February 2013

Senior Member

Here is a response from one of our DHS experts Shea Rutstein.

Estimates of duration of the postpartum variables (breastfeeding, amenorrhea, insusceptibility) can be based on recall of durations or current status. While an appropriate methodology for calculating means from recall of durations is using a life table, the well known issues of substantial heaping on durations which are multiples of 3 or 6 indicate that the results will be biased and inaccurate. The DHS reports therefore use current status rather than recall. They also use medians, which are less subject to the effects of long tails than are means. The prevalence-incidence method of calculating a mean is also a current status measure. However, it is based on a stationary population, meaning that there it assumes a constant numeric flow of births. This assumption is violated in many cases, especially for the ends of the fertile age distribution since there were far fewer births to women now 15-19 three years ago (when they were 12-16) than one year ago (when they were 14-18) and so the means will be wrong. The P/I mean is not so bad for the whole age group 15-49 but is somewhat affected by the few women breastfeeding (amenorrheic) for a long time since it is a mean.

I would use an analysis which looks at whether the woman was currently breastfeeding or amenorrheic or insusceptible at the time of the survey and whether she had begun using contraception since the last birth.

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Re: mean and median duration of breastfeeding [message #631 is a reply to message #465]

Tue, 16 July 2013 18:18

fllerena
Messages: 2
Registered: July 2013
Location: Ecuador

Member

Dear all. I am Freddy Llerena from Ecuador. I am writing the final report for the last DHS from Ecuador (2012). I have done almost all calculations, but there are a few indicators the I could not estimate. So, Could you share a sintax (SPSS, STATA, or other), in order to estimate postpartum amenorrhea, insusceptibility and postpartum sexual abstinence. On the other hand, do you have a code for measure infant mortality. Both from DHS data set.
Thanks and kind regards

Freddy Llerena
CEO/ ECONOMICA CIC
fllerena@economica.com.ec

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Re: mean and median duration of breastfeeding [message #641 is a reply to message #631]

Fri, 19 July 2013 10:41

Sarah B
Messages: 23
Registered: June 2013

Member

Hi Freddy,

Here's some code I wrote to match the table 6.8 in the Ethiopia 2005 data, which is the table on postpartum amenorrhea, insusceptibility and postpartum sexual abstinence. Please note that this table (and code) uses current status data, rather than recall of durations, which Shea mentions in his response.

** Use the KR data file, which contains all births in the 5 years prior to the survey
use "C:\DATA\ETKR51FL.DTA", clear
** Calculate age of the child in months
g agem=v008-b3
** generate sampling weight
g wgt = v005/1000000

**The denominator for the table = women with children <36m old.
**select only 2nd birth for multiple births -- assigned midx=1
ta b0 if agem<36 & (b0==0 | b0==2) [iw=wgt]
**note that this matches the total denominator.

**amenorrheic
g amen=0 if agem<36 & (b0==0 | b0==2)
*if currently pregnant, make not amenorrheic. Select for numerator only information from most recent birth (m6).
recode amen 0=1 if m6==96 & v213!=1 & midx==1
ta amen [iw=wgt]

**abstaining - same denominator and selections as for amenorrheic
g abst=0 if agem<36 & (b0==0 | b0==2)
recode abst 0=1 if m8==96 & v213!=1 & midx==1
ta abst [iw=wgt]

**insuceptible = amenorrheic or abstaining
g insuc = 0 if agem<36 & (b0==0 | b0==2)
recode insuc 0=1 if abst==1 | amen==1
ta insuc [iw=wgt]

**All match ET table 6.8

I hope this helps with your first question.

Cheers,
Sarah

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Re: mean and median duration of breastfeeding [message #644 is a reply to message #641]

Mon, 22 July 2013 09:48

Bridgette-DHS
Messages: 3214
Registered: February 2013

Senior Member

Here is a response from one of our STATA experts Tom Pullum, that should answer your question.

Freddy --The attached programs will calculate the standard mortality rates, and confidence intervals for them, in Stata. The rates agree exactly with the DHS CSPro programs. The confidence intervals are close but do not match exactly.
The programs are just text files but you can insert them into the Stata do-file editor. You will have to change the paths and the file name. This is set up for a Nigeria (NG) survey.
Let me know if you have problems. Cheers--Tom

Attachment: child_mortality_24May2013_NG_Pullum_do.txt
(Size: 25.12KB, Downloaded 2110 times)
Attachment: child_mortality_ci_25March2013_do.txt
(Size: 13.04KB, Downloaded 1671 times)

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Re: mean and median duration of breastfeeding [message #8237 is a reply to message #641]

Sat, 19 September 2015 09:58

Lonkila
Messages: 1
Registered: September 2015
Location: Burkina Faso

Member

Hello all, I am Lonkila Zan, working on Burkina Faso 2010 dataset
I used the stat code given by Sarah B and I got exactly the same proportion of amenorehic, abstening ans insusceptible like the Burkina 2010 report.
For the mean and the median of the three variables, I used the calculations explained in the Guide to DHS statistics pages 74-75-76.
But I did not get the same numbers like the report.
Can someone explain me how to procced after the code given by Sarah B.
Thank.

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Re: mean and median duration of breastfeeding [message #8356 is a reply to message #8237]

Wed, 14 October 2015 13:27

Sarah B
Messages: 23
Registered: June 2013

Member

Hi Lonkila,

When you say "For the mean and the median of the three variables, I used the calculations explained in the Guide to DHS statistics pages 74-75-76.
But I did not get the same numbers like the report," could you please tell us exactly what you are doing, perhaps by pasting your code here, and exactly which #s you are trying to match? I'll try to take a look at your code and see why your results are different than the final report.

Cheers,
Sarah

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Re: mean and median duration of breastfeeding [message #16015 is a reply to message #8356]

Mon, 22 October 2018 04:34

enansubuga
Messages: 3
Registered: January 2017
Location: Uganda

Member

Hello,

Kindly asking for the stata code for deriving the mean, median as shown in Table 5.6 for the Uganda 2016 udhs. I have used the code above and the figures match though less by a few decimal points. However, the code stops on deriving the totals and not the mean and median.

Any assistance is highly rendered.

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