 The use of national sample surveys for nutritional surveillance: Lessons from Malawi's national sample survey of agricultureDavid L. Pelletier and Louis A. H. Msukwa Social Science & Medicine, 1991, vol. 32, issue 8, 887-898 Abstract: National sample surveys, containing measurements of the weights and heights of children along with other socioeconomic modules, represent one of the important sources of information for nutritional surveillance. The potential uses of such information are political sensitization, targeting by geographic area, targeting by socioeconomic group, and identifying the most promising intervention options according to the presumed causes of malnutrition. The latter two applications depend upon the ability to detect stable associations between nutritional status and socioeconomic factors. This paper examines the extent to which these planning applications are affected by variation in the ecology of malnutrition across different segments of society, using Malawi's National Sample Survey of Agriculture (NSSA). The NSSA is nationally representative of Malawi's smallholder sector and contains information on anthropometrics of underfives and various socioeconomic characteristics of their households. This analysis is based upon 3000 households containing at least one underfive, with one child per household being selected for analysis. Height-for-age Z-scores (HAZ) are calculated using WHO standards, and analyzed using analysis of variance (ANOVA). Variation in nutritional ecology is investigated by examining statistical interactions among socioeconomic variables as they relate to HAZ and by comparing ANOVA models constructed within several sample strata. These strata are defined according to geographic region, size of cultivated area, child's sex, child's age and, for a subsample, erhnic/religious identification. The results demonstrate that significant two-way interactions exist between region, cultivated area, household labor availability and age of the child. For the total sample HAZ declines with increasing cultivated area among young children ( Keywords: nutritional; surveillance; child; malnutrition; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:32:y:1991:i:8:p:887-898 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
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