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Re: Merging Women-Men-HIV Data: Different Countries, Different Years [message #16966 is a reply to message #16859] Thu, 14 March 2019 14:35 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
Bridgette-DHS is currently offline  Bridgette-DHS
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Registered: February 2013
Senior Member

Following is a response from Senior DHS Stata Specialist, Tom Pullum:

You have to be very cautious about interpreting the results from this kind of pooling. It's likely that the stigma has been declining over time and it less in countries with higher prevalence. The surveys have a wide range in dates. Is it appropriate to include more than one survey from a country? We have had a few relevant reports; here are links to two of them: https://www.dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/AS35/AS35.pdf and https://www.dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/AS40/AS40.pdf.

Appending the IR and MR files and merging with the AR file, and then appending the merged files from all the surveys is the correct approach, and your Stata code looks good. When you prepare the women's file you need a line "gen sex=2", and when you prepare the men's file you need "gen sex==1" and "rename mv* v*". For each survey you need to add a line such as "gen str20 survey_label="Kenya 2003"" and it is also helpful to have a numerical variable "survey" which is 1, 2, 3, etc. When we do this sort of thing at DHS we loop through the files using sub-programs and local notation. I hesitate to describe that process in detail.

You can alter the weights, clusters, and strata afterwards, in the final merged and appended file. There are many forum postings on the options and strategies for doing this.


 
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