Abstract

To facilitate the use of data collected through the high-frequency phone surveys on COVID-19, the Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) team has created the harmonized datafiles using two household surveys: 1) the country’ latest face-to-face survey which has become the sample frame for the phone survey, and 2) the country’s high-frequency phone survey on COVID-19.

The LSMS team has extracted and harmonized variables from these surveys, based on the harmonized definitions and ensuring the same variable names. These variables include demography as well as housing, household consumption expenditure, food security, and agriculture. Inevitably, many of the original variables are collected using questions that are asked differently. The harmonized datafiles include the best available variables with harmonized definitions.

Two harmonized datafiles are prepared for each survey. The two datafiles are: 1. HH: This datafile contains household-level variables. The information include basic household characterizes, housing, water and sanitation, asset ownership, consumption expenditure, consumption quintile, food security, livestock ownership. It also contains information on agricultural activities such as crop cultivation, use of organic and inorganic fertilizer, hired labor, use of tractor and crop sales.
2. IND: This datafile contains individual-level variables. It includes basic characteristics of individuals such as age, sex, marital status, disability status, literacy, education and work.

Geographic coverage

National coverage

Analysis unit

• Households
• Individuals

Universe

The survey covered all de jure households excluding prisons, hospitals, military barracks, and school dormitories.

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

See “Malawi - Integrated Household Panel Survey 2010-2013-2016-2019 (Long-Term Panel, 102 EAs)” and “Malawi - High-Frequency Phone Survey on COVID-19” available in the Microdata Library for details.

Mode of data collection

Computer Assisted Personal Interview [capi]

Cleaning operations

Malawi Integrated Household Panel Survey (IHPS) 2019 and Malawi High-Frequency Phone Survey on COVID-19 data were harmonized following the harmonization guidelines (see “Harmonized Datafiles and Variables for High-Frequency Phone Surveys on COVID-19” for more details).

The high-frequency phone survey on COVID-19 has multiple rounds of data collection. When variables are extracted from multiple rounds of the survey, the originating round of the survey is noted with “_rX” in the variable name, where X represents the number of the round. For example, a variable with “_r3” presents that the variable was extracted from Round 3 of the high-frequency phone survey. Round 0 refers to the country’s latest face-to-face survey which has become the sample frame for the high-frequency phone surveys on COVID-19. When the variables are without “_rX”, they were extracted from Round 0.

Response rate

See “Malawi - Integrated Household Panel Survey 2010-2013-2016-2019 (Long-Term Panel, 102 EAs)” and “Malawi - High-Frequency Phone Survey on COVID-19” available in the Microdata Library for details.