rdhs: an R package to interact with The Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) Program datasets [version 1; peer review: 1 approved, 1 approved with reservations]
File(s)
Author(s)
Watson, Oliver
FitzJohn, Rich
Eaton, Jeffrey
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Since 1985, the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) Program has conducted more than 400 surveys in over 90 countries. These surveys provide decision markers with key measures of population demographics, health and nutrition, which allow informed policy evaluation to be made. Though standard health indicators are routinely published in survey final reports, much of the value of DHS is derived from the ability to download and analyse standardised microdata datasets for subgroup analysis, pooled multi-country analysis, and extended research studies. We have developed an open-source freely available R package ‘rdhs’ to facilitate management and processing of DHS survey data. The package provides a suite of tools to (1) access standard survey indicators through the DHS Program API, (2) identify all survey datasets that include a particular topic or indicator relevant to a particular analysis, (3) directly download survey datasets from the DHS website, (4) load datasets and data dictionaries into R, and (5) extract variables and pool harmonised datasets for multi-survey analysis. We detail the core functionality of ‘rdhs’ by demonstrating how the package can be used to firstly compare trends in the prevalence of anaemia among women between countries before conducting secondary analysis to assess for the relationship between education and anemia.
Date Issued
2019-06-27
Date Acceptance
2019-06-01
Citation
Wellcome Open Research, 2019, 4 (103), pp.1-13
ISSN
2398-502X
Publisher
F1000Research
Start Page
1
End Page
13
Journal / Book Title
Wellcome Open Research
Volume
4
Issue
103
Copyright Statement
© 2019 Watson OJ et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Sponsor
National Institutes of Health
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Medical Research Council (MRC)
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Wellcome Trust
Identifier
https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/4-103/v1
Grant Number
5776-ICS-DHHS-6664
OPP1190661
MR/R015600/1
2018/837458-0 PO202048522
109312/Z/15/Z
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2019-06-27