Notes
Imputed Dates
For key events in the respondent's life, dates have been imputed when the full date of the event was not provided by the respondent or in some cases if dates are inconsistent (e.g. less than 7 months between births). These events are the date of birth of the respondent, the date of first union or marriage, the date of birth of each child of the respondent, the date of conception of the current pregnancy (based on the duration of pregnancy), the date of start of use of current method, and. For each of these dates only the imputed data are available in the recode data file, but a date flag has been included in the file to show what format the information was in prior to imputation, and what basis was used for the imputation. The codes for this date flag are as follows:
1 Both month and year of the event were specified and so no imputation was necessary.
2 The year of the event was not given, but the month of the event and the age of the respondent or child or, in the case of the date of first union, the respondent's age at first union were specified. In most cases this information uniquely identifies the exact date of the event. In a few cases the year of the event was imputed from a choice of two possible years.
3 The year of the event, but not the month, and the age of the respondent or child or, in the case of the date of first union, the respondent's age at first union were specified and only the month of the event was imputed.
4 The year of birth, but not the month, and the age of the respondent or child were specified. However, in surveys where it is believed the year of birth is calculated from the age, the year of birth is ignored when the year of birth plus the age add up to the year of interview.
5 The year of the event was given but the month of the event was not specified, and neither was the age. The month of the event was imputed.
6 Neither the month nor the year of the event was specified, but age was given and the year and month of the event were imputed from the age.
7 Only the month of the event was given, without the year or age. The year of the event was imputed from other information. (For current pregnancy, duration of pregnancy was given.)
8 No information was given concerning the date of the event. But month and year of the event were imputed from other information. (For current pregnancy, duration of pregnancy was not given.)
For the date of conception of the current pregnancy only codes 7 and 8 are used. The date of interview is required to be fully specified in all cases and so no imputation is necessary for this variable and no format flag exists for the date of interview.
A full description of the imputation process is given in the DHS Data Processing Manual.
