Linking HIV Test Results to Individual Data

GLOBAL HEALTH
1

Hello,

I am starting a project linking HIV seropositivity with a host of covariates from women and men data files.
I am pooling data across countries and across years…

  1. Can I link the HIV dataset to the IPUMS data?
    If so, do I create my set of samples/data from IPUMS first, and then link them to the HIV data?

  2. Also, does the IPUMS-DHS include men-recode data? If not, how do I include men in my data?

Thanks - Yy

2

We are currently working on adding men’s data to IPUMS-DHS and expect to have released the standard variables for men as a unit of analysis by late spring/early summer 2019.

You should be able to link the HIV dataset to the IPUMS data, since we have kept various identifiers used for linking to the original DHS files. I need to check into the details, and will respond more fully soon.

3

I found the following post on the DHS User forum, about merging HIV test result files with other DHS data files:
“I believe there are person identifiers in the HIV dataset called hivclust, hivnumb, and hivline, the combination of which should be a person’s unique identifier. These represent the cluster, household, and line number variables, respectively. The easiest way is to rename these variables to v001, v002, and v003 (as these variables are called in the IR dataset), respectively. If merging with male recode dataset, then you would rename these variables to mv001, mv002, and mv003. After renaming hivclust, hivnumb, and hivline, and sorting by the appropriate variables (v001, v002, and v003 for women and mv001, mv002, and mv003 for men’s dataset), you should be able to merge the datasets on these variables.”

If you chose women as your unit of analysis in IPUMS-DHS and opt for showing the original DHS variable names, you can select V001 (IPUMS name: CLUSTERNO), V002 (IPUMS name: HHNUM), and V003 (IPUMS name: LINENO) as elements of your customized data extract. Then you would rename the HIV dataset variable names to match and merge on these variables. I would do this for one dataset at a time, or add some other linking variables to distinguish between samples, such as COUNTRY and YEAR.

When we add men as a unit of analysis (very soon), the MV001, MV002, and MV003 identifier variables will be available for IPUMS-DHS samples, as well.

I hope this helps.

4

IPUMS-DHS now includes data for men as a fifth unit of analysis, so now you can work with men’s data with IPUMS-DHS. At this writing, standard variables for men for 120 samples are included in IPUMS-DHS.

5

thnaks - already using it.