The Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) is a national sample survey of women of reproductive
age whose primary objectives were:
(i) To collect data for the evaluation of family planning and health programmes;
(ii) To assess the demographic situation in Nigeria; and
(iii) To support dissemination and utilization of the results in planning and managing family planning and
health programmes.
To achieve the objectives, the NDHS was designed to collect data on socioeconomic characteristics, marriage
patterns, fertility histories, child feeding patltMs and the nutritional status of children under five years of age,
use of contraception, pre- and postnatal health Lore services, accessibility to health and family planning
services and treatment of children during episodes of illness.
Sample Selection
In order to have a nationally representative survey, the NDHS sample was drawn from the national master
sample forthe 1987/1992 National Integrated Survey of Households (NISH) ofthe Federal Office of Statistics
(FOS). The NISH master sample was created in 1986 on the basis of the 1973 census enumeration areas.
The sample was drawn from all the states of the federation. For the NDHS sample, two sectors were created
from the three sectors usually adopted by the FOS. The urban and semiurban sectors of NISH were combined
into one category--urban--while the rural sector retained the NISH classification. A sample of about I0,()00 households was designed with two fold oversampling of the urban stratum, yielding 132 urban enumeration
areas and 167 rural enumeration areas. The NDHIS sample is thus a weighted sample and was designed to
provide national estimates as well as estimates for the four health zones of the Federal Ministry of Health.
The four health zones are: Northeast, Northwest, Southeast and Southwest.