Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS)

Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) are nationally-representative household surveys that provide data for a wide range of monitoring and impact evaluation indicators in the areas of population, health, and nutrition.

 

Type of survey: There are two main types of DHS Surveys:

  • Standard DHS Surveys: have large sample sizes (usually between 5,000 and 30,000 households) and typically are conducted about every 5 years, to allow comparisons over time.
  • Interim DHS Surveys: focus on the collection of information on key performance monitoring indicators but may not include data for all impact evaluation measures (such as mortality rates). These surveys are conducted between rounds of Standard DHS surveys and have shorter questionnaires than Standard DHS surveys.

 

Years available: Differs per country and survey. A search query from here can give you the available years per country per survey. Remember to sort by year.

Participating countries: Afghanistan, Albania, Angola, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Benin, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Colombia, Comoros, Congo, Cote D’Ivoire, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyz Republic, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico, Moldova, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia and Niger, among many others.

Sample size: Differs per type of survey but all standard surveys have between 5,000 and 30,000 respondents.

 

Accessibility: Medium

  • Register here and fill in the form. During this process you will be asked to select the countries you are interested in, together with the desired thematic topics.
  • After the process is done, your request will be pending. Once your form is accepted, you will receive the necessary links to download the data.
  • The waiting time is from 1-3 days.

 

Theme: Health, Nutrition, Fertility. For a detailed description of all topics, see here.

 

Data management difficulty: Easy/Medium

  • Each survey is different from the other. If you wish the handle several surveys at the same time, considering that each survey might have several waves, the task might require some advanced data manipulation techniques.
  • Some surveys are already merged and prepared for data analysis, which require little data management skills.