The data originate from a demographic surveillance site (DSS) in Karonga district in northern Malawi covering a population of >35,000 individuals from approx. 8000 households since 2002. This is run by MEIRU (Malawi Epidemiology and Intervention Research Unit). Annual individual and household-level socio-demographic and schooling data were combined with data on participants’ sexual behaviour, including age at sexual debut, pregnancy and marriage to examine the relationship between school progression (drop-out and age-for-grade) and sexual debut, pregnancy and marriage.
Surveys were administered by field staff using paper questionnaires in the local language (Chitumbuka). Data collection was supervised and managed on site by a team of scientists, field enumerators and data entry personnel. Data were then double-entered into MS Access by the data entry office for further analysis.
To examine the relationship between school progression and sexual debut, pregnancy and marriage, data was combined from (1) individual-level surveys (including schooling histories), (2) household-level socio-economic surveys (data on household assets and consumption) and (3) sexual behaviour data, including the approximate timing of sexual debut, pregnancy and marriage. Participant IDs are used to link individuals within and across households over time. Further details on the methods used for data capture and analyses have been elaborated in the methods section of the paper.
Karonga district, northern Malawi
Data collected between 2007 – 2016.
Human population
To protect participant confidentiality, direct and indirect identifiers, such as name and location, have been removed; Date of Birth and Sexual Debut date have been broadened to prevent deductive disclosure; and other variables are grouped. The dataset has been checked with Statistical Disclosure Control (SDC) methods (Templ, M., Kowarik, A. and Meindl, B., 2015. Statistical disclosure control for micro-data using the R package sdcMicro. Journal of Statistical Software, 67(1), pp.1-36)
Ethics approval for the demographic surveillance and sexual behaviour studies was obtained from the National Health Sciences Research Committee in Malawi (#419) and Research Ethics Committee of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. For the demographic surveillance verbal consent was given by the head of household. For the sexual behaviour surveys individual written informed consent was sought.
School progression; school performance; sexual debut; pregnancy; marriage; Malawi, sub-Saharan Africa
Chitumbuka, English
Understanding the causes of school drop-out in Malawi
| Forename | Surname | Faculty / Dept | Institution | Role |
| Bindu | Sunny | Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health / Dept of Infectious Disease Epidemiology | London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine | Data Creator |
| Judith | Glynn | Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health / Dept of Infectious Disease Epidemiology | London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine | Contact Person \ Project leader |
| Mia | Crampin | Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health / Dept of Infectious Disease Epidemiology | London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine | Project Leader - Director of MEIRU |
| Chifundo | Kanjala | Malawi Epidemiology and Intervention Research Unit (MEIRU) | Data Manager |
| Filename | Description | Access status | Licence |
| Karonga_DSS_dataset.csv | Socio-demographic data, sexual behaviour history including age at sexual debut, pregnancy and marriage | ||
| ABS-InfoSheet_ConsentForm_English.pdf | Karonga Prevention Study participant information sheet and consent form | Open | Creative Commons Attribution (CCBY) |
| CRS-InfoSheet_ConsentForm.pdf | Demographic surveillance by a Continuous Registration System (CRS) - information sheet and consent form | Open | Creative Commons Attribution (CCBY) |
| Codebook.html | Dataset codebook | Open | Creative Commons Attribution (CCBY) |