Demographic and Health Survey 2008 - IPUMS Subset

Ghana, 2008

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Reference ID

GHA_2008_DHS_v01_M_v02_A_IPUMS

Producer(s)

Ghana Statistical Service, Ghana Health Service, and ICF Macro., Minnesota Population Center

Metadata

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Created on

Sep 19, 2018

Last modified

Sep 19, 2018

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Weight for age percentile (CDC standards) (members under age 5) (H_HWCWTAPCT)

Data file: GHA2008-H.dat

Overview

Type: Discrete

Decimal: 0

Start: 581

End: 584

Width: 4

Range: -

Format: Numeric

Questions and instructions

Literal question

505. WEIGHT IN KILOGRAMS

CHILD WEIGHT

KG ____.__

Value	Category
9997	Flagged cases
9998	Missing
9999	NIU (not in universe)

Description

Definition

For household members under age 5, HWCWTAPCT (HC7) reports their weight-for-age percentile, based on smoothed percentile growth charts by age and sex developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

Low weight-for-age, or "underweight," is an indicator of chronic and/or acute malnutrition. The 5th percentile on growth charts has often been used as a screening cutoff to identify infants and children at greater nutritional and health risk.

HWCWEIGHT (HC2) reports the young household member's weight as measured by DHS personnel. The related variable AGEMOHHLT5 (HC1) reports age in months at the time of measurement.

For an alternative measure of wasting in terms of weight-for-age using the same reference population, see HWCWAZNCHS (HC8). HWCWAZNCHS reports the difference between the young household member's weight and the median weight of the CDC reference population of the same age and sex, expressed in units equal to one standard deviation of the reference population's distribution.

concept

Concept

var_concept.title	Vocabulary
Child anthropometry Variables -- TOPICS	IPUMS

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