Space-Time Smoothing of Complex Survey Data: Small Area Estimation for Child Mortality.

ABSTRACT: Many people living in low and middle-income countries are not covered by civil registration and vital statistics systems. Consequently, a wide variety of other types of data including many household sample surveys are used to estimate health and population indicators. In this paper we combine data from sample surveys and demographic surveillance systems to produce small area estimates of child mortality through time. Small area estimates are necessary to understand geographical heterogeneity in health indicators when full-coverage vital statistics are not available. For this endeavor spatio-temporal smoothing is beneficial to alleviate problems of data sparsity. The use of conventional hierarchical models requires careful thought since the survey weights may need to be considered to allevi

SUBMITTER: Mercer LD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4959836 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature