From: Correlates of appropriate disposal of children’s stools in Malawi: a multilevel analysis
Individual-level factors | Description |
---|---|
Sex of the child | Male, Female |
Age of the child (months) | ≤ 5, 6–11, 12–17, 18–23 |
Maternal age (years) | 15–24, 25–34, ≥35 |
Number of children ever had | 1, 2, 3, 4+ |
Maternal educational level | No formal education, primary, secondary and higher |
Wealth | The MDHS uses principal component analysis to score household items to calculate wealth. The scores are categorized into quintiles from poorest to richest. In this study, richest and rich were grouped as “rich” (upper 40%), middle remained the same (middle 20%), and poorest and poor were grouped as “poor” (lower 40%). |
Employed | No, yes |
Media exposure | No, Yes (Composite variable categorizing those that reported listening to radio, reading newspaper or watching television at least one a week as “yes” otherwise as “no”) |
Religion | Catholics, protestants, Muslims and others |
Water source | Unimproved, improved (Improved water source included piped water, boreholes or tube-wells, protected dug wells, protected springs, rainwater, and packaged or delivered water) |
Sanitation type | Unimproved, improved (improved included flush toilets, piped sewer system, septic tank, flush/pour flush to pit latrine, ventilated improved pit latrine, pit latrine with slab, and composting toilet) |
Community-level factors | |
Residence | Urban, rural |
Region | Northern, Central, Southern |
Community wealth | Aggregated from individual-level wealth index defined as the proportion of women who were coming from rich households. The resultant score was categorized using tertiles as low, middle, high. |
Community education | Aggregated from individual-level maternal educational level defined as the proportion of women who had primary or above education. The resultant score was categorized using tertiles as low, middle, high. |