DHS Program Analysis Highlights: Summer 2019

Many students and faculty are out of school at this time of year, but The DHS Program’s analysis team is busy at work. In addition to finalizing their annual analytical papers, the team continues to support country-specific further analysis, train Fellows, write code to share with other researchers, and support data quality improvements.

Here are some of the highlights of 2019 so far:

• The DHS Program hosted a showcase of the major findings from a dozen further analysis papers based on the 2015-16 Myanmar Demographic and Health Survey in Yangon in early July. More than 50 population and health professionals in Myanmar participated in DHS data analysis trainings, resulting in the publication of 9 papers now available on The DHS Program website. Several more will be published in the coming months.

• The DHS Program Code library is live on GitHub! Stata code for about half of the indicators listed in the Guide to DHS Statistics is already available. The remaining indicators and SPSS code will be released in 2020.

• Another class of DHS Fellows has graduated! This year, 6 teams from universities in Afghanistan, Indonesia, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Ghana, and Senegal have prepared working papers in areas covering child vaccination, nutrition, malaria, contraceptive discontinuation, men’s family planning, and HIV testing.

• A recent analysis workshop in Ghana linked research to action by integrating policy brief writing with statistical analysis of data from the 2017 Ghana Maternal Health Survey. Proposed policy recommendations address inequalities and advocate for programs that protect and promote the health of women. Policy briefs will be published soon on The DHS Program website.

Coming Soon in 2019!

• By geographically linking SPA and DHS data, two upcoming working papers explore the relationship between the antenatal care service environment and maternal health behaviors including iron-folic acid consumption and early breastfeeding. Working Papers 160 and 161 will be published in mid-August.

• What are the determinants of child marriage in Asia? In Bangladesh and Nepal, marriage by age 15 is more common in clusters where women’s acceptance of wife-beating is more prevalent. Find out more in Analytical Studies 69.

• Do regional disparities in fertility preferences and family planning satisfied by modern methods persist when controlling for poverty? Analytical Report 7 will explore this question for 12 DHS Program countries and 3 groups of absolute poverty measurements.

• The DHS Program explores strategies to identify potential data quality issues after data collection in Methodological Report 26.

• Two new chapters – Fistula and Female Genital Cutting – will be included in the DHS Guide to Statistics.  

• For the first time, summary briefs will be available for almost all analytical studies and comparative reports published this year. Briefs will feature figures and maps and easily digestible bullets of key findings for a variety of audiences.

Featured photo: Samuel Oppong (left) work on data analysis at the 2017 Regional DHS/MIS Malaria Analysis Workshop. © ICF