Definition
For women who gave birth in the last three to five years and who delivered by caesarian section, DELCESRDEC_ALL (M17A_x) indicates whether the decision to deliver by caesarian section was made before or after labor began.
DELCESRDEC_ALL consists of a set of six separate variables, covering the most recent birth (DELCESRDEC_01) up to the sixth-most-recent birth (i.e., DELCESRDEC_02, DELCESRDEC_03, DELCESRDEC_04, DELCESRDEC_05, and DELCESRDEC_06) during the reference period prior to the survey. If DELCESRDEC_ALL is included in a data extract, all these separate variables are included in a researcher's data file.
For surveys including this question, information for this variable was collected on all births, up to a maximum of six, in the reference period. 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 DELCESRDEC_06 would not be available for that survey in IPUMS-DHS.
