Definition
For women who gave birth in the three to five years before the survey and who wanted to become pregnant later, CHDESIREL_ALL (M11_x) reports the length of time they would have wanted to wait. Following DHS convention, intervals reported in weeks are coded with a "1" in the first digit, while intervals reported in years are coded with a "2" in the first digit.
CHDESIREL_ALL consists of a set of up to six separate variables, covering the most recent birth (CHDESIREL_01) up to, potentially, the sixth-most-recent birth (i.e., CHDESIREREL_02, CHDESIREL_03, CHDESIREREL_04, CHDESIREL_05, and CHDESIREL_06) during the reference period prior to the survey. If CHDESIREL_ALL is included in a data extract, all these separate variables are included in a researcher's data file.
For nearly all samples, this information was collected for all births within the reference period preceding the survey. (See Comparability for information about exceptions.) In many cases, data were hypothetically collected on up to six births, but no women in the survey had so many births (e.g., no woman had 4 or more births in 3 years, or had 5 or 6 births in 5 years). If, for example, no woman in a survey had 6 births in five years and only blank values were included in the original DHS file, then CHDESIREL_06 would not be available for that survey in IPUMS-DHS.
