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Re: Merging Malawi MIS 2017 Datasets [message #16696 is a reply to message #16635] Tue, 19 February 2019 18:37 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
Bridgette-DHS is currently offline  Bridgette-DHS
Messages: 3039
Registered: February 2013
Senior Member
Following is a response from Lead Malaria Research Analyst, Cameron Taylor:

Thanks for your question. What you need to think through is "what is your unit of analysis". Are you wanting your unit of analysis to be women or children? This impacts the type of merge that you do. In what you describe it sounds like your unit of analysis is the woman, which means your base file is the IR file.

To examine the woman's knowledge in relationship to her child's parasitemia status you will want to merge the PR file into the IR file (each row is information about a woman). The PR file has all the malaria testing information for children under 5. You need to keep in mind that there are women in the IR file who don't have a child under age 5 who was tested for malaria and conversely you have children in the PR file who were tested for malaria but who don't have a mother who was interviewed as part of the women's questionnaire (mother is dead, mother wasn't in the household, the kid was visiting, etc).

If you want the children to be your unit of analysis/denominator you would then merge the PR file into the KR file (each row is information about a child). The malaria knowledge questions are also in the KR file but keep in mind that the unit of analysis in the KR file is children, so this is knowledge of the mother linked to the kid.

Sorry this is very tricky! Be careful about your unit of analysis since that will dictate the type of merge you perform. For more information about DHS data structures and data files please see the following YouTube tutorials

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmiSDPebmgc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzLNQkkvDeI
 
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