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Health Survey Data (health + survey_data)
Selected AbstractsFirst Politics, Then Culture: Accounting for Ethnic Differences in Demographic Behavior in KenyaPOPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 3 2001Alexander A. Weinreb Ethnic differences in demographic behavior tend to be disguised behind analytically opaque labels like "district" or "region," or else subjected to simplistic cultural explanations. Drawing on new political economy, sociological theory and the political science literature on sub-Saharan Africa, this article proposes an alternative explanatory model and tests it empirically with reference to Kenya. Access to political power and, through power, access to a state's resources,including resources devoted to clinics, schools, labor opportunities, and other determinants of demographic behavior,are advanced as the key factors underlying ethnic differences. District-level estimates of "political capital" are introduced and merged with two waves of Demographic and Health Survey data. The effects on models of contraceptive use are explored. Results confirm that measures of political capital explain residual ethnic differences in use, providing strong support for a political approach to the analysis of demographic behavior. [source] The Spread of Primary Schooling in sub-Saharan Africa: Implications for Fertility ChangePOPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 3 2000Cynthia B. Lloyd In 1980 Caldwell hypothesized that the time of the onset of the fertility transition in developing countries would be linked with the achievement of "mass formal schooling." This article applies Demographic and Health Survey data to assess schooling patterns and trends for 23 sub-Saharan African countries, using the percentage of 15,19-year olds who have completed at least four years of schooling as an indicator of progress in education. As background to that assessment, the article includes a review of the sparse literature on the links between children's schooling and fertility decline. The analysis strongly supports Caldwell's hypothesis with empirical evidence of the much stronger negative relationship between fertility decline and grade 4 attainment in those countries that have attained mass-schooling levels than in those that have not yet achieved such levels. [source] Fertility transition in Ghana: looking back and looking forwardPOPULATION, SPACE AND PLACE (PREVIOUSLY:-INT JOURNAL OF POPULATION GEOGRAPHY), Issue 6 2006Samuel Agyei-Mensah Abstract It is widely accepted that while the fertility transition is underway in sub-Saharan Africa, the pattern of change differs widely in both time and space. This paper examines the case of Ghana, regarded as the vanguard in the West African fertility transition. Based largely on analyses of Demographic and Health Survey data as well as localised studies, significant patterns emerge. One puzzling finding is that the increase in modern contraception usage has not kept pace with the declines in fertility. The paper suggests that this mismatch can be explained either by an increase in induced abortions, reduced exposure to sexual relations (perhaps due to HIV), or misreporting of contraceptive use. The paper also highlights the considerable geographical diversity in the ongoing fertility transition. The Northern region is still in the pre-transition stage, with little decline in fertility to date. In contrast, the pace of decline has been very rapid in the Greater Accra region. The factors underlying these patterns and the future trajectory of the fertility transition are discussed. It is argued that the fertility transition may be more leisurely in the near future than in the recent past. Among the factors working against future fertility decline are the stability in the infant mortality rate, the stall in fertility desires, and the low patronage of modern contraceptives especially in rural areas. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Assessment of Individual Risk of Death Using Self-Report Data: An Artificial Neural Network Compared with a Frailty IndexJOURNAL OF AMERICAN GERIATRICS SOCIETY, Issue 7 2004Xiaowei Song PhD Objectives: To evaluate the potential of an artificial neural network (ANN) in predicting survival in elderly Canadians, using self-report data. Design: Cohort study with up to 72 months follow-up. Setting: Forty self-reported characteristics were obtained from the community sample of the Canadian Study of Health and Aging. An individual frailty index score was calculated as the proportion of deficits experienced. For the ANN, randomly selected participants formed the training sample to derive relationships between the variables and survival and the validation sample to control overfitting. An ANN output was generated for each subject. A separate testing sample was used to evaluate the accuracy of prediction. Participants: A total of 8,547 Canadians aged 65 to 99, of whom 1,865 died during 72 months of follow-up. Measurements: The output of an ANN model was compared with an unweighted frailty index in predicting survival patterns using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Results: The area under the ROC curve was 86% for the ANN and 62% for the frailty index. At the optimal ROC value, the accuracy of the frailty index was 70.0%. The ANN accuracy rate over 10 simulations in predicting the probability of individual survival mean±standard deviation was 79.2±0.8%. Conclusion: An ANN provided more accurate survival classification than an unweighted frailty index. The data suggest that the concept of biological redundancy might be operationalized from health survey data. [source] Sampling within households in household surveysJOURNAL OF THE ROYAL STATISTICAL SOCIETY: SERIES A (STATISTICS IN SOCIETY), Issue 1 2007Robert G. Clark Summary., The number of people to select within selected households has significant consequences for the conduct and output of household surveys. The operational and data quality implications of this choice are carefully considered in many surveys, but the effect on statistical efficiency is not well understood. The usual approach is to select all people in each selected household, where operational and data quality concerns make this feasible. If not, one person is usually selected from each selected household. We find that this strategy is not always justified, and we develop intermediate designs between these two extremes. Current practices were developed when household survey field procedures needed to be simple and robust; however, more complex designs are now feasible owing to the increasing use of computer-assisted interviewing. We develop more flexible designs by optimizing survey cost, based on a simple cost model, subject to a required variance for an estimator of population total. The innovation lies in the fact that household sample sizes are small integers, which creates challenges in both design and estimation. The new methods are evaluated empirically by using census and health survey data, showing considerable improvement over existing methods in some cases. [source] Income and Health Concentration in AustraliaTHE ECONOMIC RECORD, Issue 246 2003Duangkamon Chotikapanich This paper measures the concentration of ill-health among income groups in Australia using health survey data from 1989,90 (Australian Bureau of Statistics 1991) and 1995 (Australian Bureau of Statistics 1997), which contain responses on self-assessed health status and gross personal income. The technique of direct standardisation is used to control for the influence on health status of gender and age. Comparisons of the concentration of ill-health over time and between males and females and persons living in rural and urban areas are reported. For both surveys and all groups, we find that ill-health is concentrated among lower income groups. Concentration measures of ill-health are higher (in absolute terms) for men than for women. In all categories apart from women, the concentration measures fell between 1989,90 and 1995 surveys. [source] Research Using Emergency Department,related Data Sets: Current Status and Future DirectionsACADEMIC EMERGENCY MEDICINE, Issue 11 2009Jon Mark Hirshon MD Abstract The 2009 Academic Emergency Medicine consensus conference focused on "Public Health in the ED: Surveillance, Screening and Intervention." One conference breakout session discussed the significant research value of health-related data sets. This article represents the proceedings from that session, primarily focusing on emergency department (ED)-related data sets and includes examples of the use of a data set based on ED visits for research purposes. It discusses types of ED-related data sets available, highlights barriers to research use of ED-related data sets, and notes limitations of these data sets. The paper highlights future directions and challenges to using these important sources of data for research, including identification of five main needs related to enhancing the use of ED-related data sets. These are 1) electronic linkage of initial and follow-up ED visits and linkage of information about ED visits to other outcomes, including costs of care, while maintaining deidentification of the data; 2) timely data access with minimal barriers; 3) complete data collection for clinically relevant and/or historical data elements, such as the external cause-of-injury code; 4) easy access to data that can be parsed into smaller jurisdictions (such as states) for policy and/or research purposes, while maintaining confidentiality; and 5) linkages between health survey data and health claims data. ED-related data sets contain much data collected directly from health care facilities, individual patient records, and multiple other sources that have significant potential impact for studying and improving the health of individuals and the population. [source] Comparison of adult oral health in Australia, the USA, Germany and the UKAUSTRALIAN DENTAL JOURNAL, Issue 2 2009LA Crocombe Abstract Background:, Australian adults reportedly have poor oral health when compared to 28 other OECD countries. The Australian ranking was based on edentulism and caries experience data from selected age groups that apparently were collected in 1987,88. The objective of this study was to compare the oral health of Australian adults with that of three other western countries that have comprehensive oral health survey data. Methods:, Published data were obtained from the NHANES 2003,2004, the Fourth German Oral Health Study 2005 and the UK Adult Dental Health Survey 1998. Data from the Australian NSAOH 2004,06 were analysed to generate comparable age-specific estimates using nine dental clinical indicators, two measures of oral hygiene behaviour and two of dental attendance. Results:, Australia had the best oral health based on two clinical indicators, was equal first on three indicators and ranked second in the remaining clinical indicators. Australia ranked first or second based on dental flossing, use of mouthwash and frequency of dental attendance. Conclusions:, The oral health of the Australian adult population was among the best of the four nations studied. [source] | |||||||||||||