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estimating nutritional status [message #13001]

Thu, 07 September 2017 19:02

tdusingize
Messages: 4
Registered: September 2017
Location: New Zealand

Member

Hi all,

Kindly help me on the following:

I would like to know the nutritional status of children in one of the Rwanda's districts.

1) Can I do that by using the latest DHS data assuming that the sample of children included in DHS was representative for that district?

2) Does DHS data have individual child age, weights and heights which I can use to do my own calculations for HAZ or WHZ?

3) How do I interpret Height/Age or Weight/Height std deviations of -54, -116, -23, 1467, etc in SPSS or SAS data sets?

4) Is weighting applied to all variables?

Thanks,
Theo.

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Re: estimating nutritional status [message #13051 is a reply to message #13001]

Mon, 11 September 2017 13:40

Reduced-For(u)m
Messages: 292
Registered: March 2013

Senior Member

1) Can I do that by using the latest DHS data assuming that the sample of children included in DHS was representative for that district?
The DHS is usually representative at the Region-X-Urban level. You should look at the documentation for your particular survey to find out what level it is representative at.

2) Does DHS data have individual child age, weights and heights which I can use to do my own calculations for HAZ or WHZ?
Yes, although it is somewhat difficult because the HAZ calc is based on days since birth, and not just months, so you have to calculate the exact age on your own.

3) How do I interpret Height/Age or Weight/Height std deviations of -54, -116, -23, 1467, etc in SPSS or SAS data sets?
Divide by 100. That is, an HAZ of -150 is -1.5 (or 1.5sd below the reference population for that age and gender)

4) Is weighting applied to all variables?
Yes.

*Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with the DHS, but answers 3 and 4 are for sure. (1) depends a bit survey-to-survey, and (2) is a little tricky - you can just use the WHO-reference anthropometric variables provided in the newest DHS datasets, see the HW70s variables.

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