Demographic and Health Surveys Methodology - Measure DHS

DHS women’s recode files include four standard variables containing all women factors:• AWFACTT—All women factor, for total population• AWFACTU—All women factor, for education (none, primary, secondary, higher)• AWFACE—All women factor, for place of residence (urban/rural)• AWFACTR—All women factor, for region (according to the country’s regions).These variables are five-digit variables with two implicit decimals, so they have to be divided by 100.Any table that is based on total population for ever-married samples should use these factors. All tablesbased on all women (fertility rates, age at first union, age at first sex, etc.) must use ever-married factors.If the background variable to be used is not one of the standard or country-specific “all women factors”they have to be created as described in this example.Matching Data FilesAs mentioned earlier, DHS distributes separately Household, Women, Children under five, Men, andCouples files in flat or rectangular formats. Special care has been taken to include all variables that aredeemed important for each of these files. For example, variables for household characteristics areincluded in the women, men, and children’s files. However, there are instances when researchers have tomerge or combine different files to obtain the variables that meet their analysis needs. This sectiondiscusses the variables and mechanisms that can be used to accomplish that task.One of the advantages of processing complex surveys with a software capable of handling hierarchicalfiles is that it allows to tightly control the case identifiers. DHS guarantees that their files can be matchedseamlessly whenever a relationship is possible. To properly manipulate the files it is necessary to knowwhat the variables or fields that identify the cases are. The following table shows those fields.Unique Identifiers for Data FilesFile ID Variable Cluster HH NumberLineNumber Birth OrderHusband/WifeHousehold HHID HV001 HV002 HVIDXWomen CASEID V001 V002 V003 V034Men MCASEID MV001 MV002 MV003 MV034iChildren CASEID V001 V002 V003 BIDXCouples CASEID V001 V002 V003Column “ID Variable” is an alphabetical variable that uniquely identify a case. This variable is normallyconstructed by concatenating variables cluster and household number for the household file and cluster;household number; and line number for women, men, and couples. In the case of children, variableCASEID is the same as that of their mother plus a consecutive number to differentiate among childrenborn in the last five years of the same mother. CASEID for couples is that of the woman (as opposed toMCASEID the man identifier) because in polygamous countries a man can be the partner for more thanone woman.When merging files it is probably easier to do so using the original variables rather than the ID variables.For example,Guide to DHS Statistics 21 September 2003