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Maternal And Community Hiv / Aids : Evidence From The Demographic And Health Surveys

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“Household and community HIV/AIDs status and child malnutrition in sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from the demographic and health surveys” was written by Monica A. Magadi (2011). The article explores if and how children under five years of age who are living with an HIV/AIDS positive family member are negatively impacted. The study was intended to find the correlation between childhood malnutrition and an HIV/AIDS positive family member living within the children’s households. The incidences of reported cases of HIV/AIDS are significantly greater in sub-Saharan Africa than elsewhere (Magadi, 2011). It is widely believed that the presence of HIV/AIDS in children’s lives adversely impacts their growth and ultimately causes child malnutrition …show more content…

It is likely that respondents in Magadi’s study were in a similar boat and could have contracted HIV/AIDS since their last test. Inaccurate responses lead to inaccurate data. Respondent bias was surely present regarding a taboo topic such as HIV/AIDS. However, there is really no other method that Magadi could have used to collect data on HIV/AIDS because it is by nature a personal subject. The initial collection of the data may have been skewed due to respondent bias in reporting HIV/AIDS positive statuses.
Additionally, Magadi did not collect her own data and instead relied upon secondary data, which can be limiting in many ways. The data used in the study was originally collected from the International Demographic and Health Surveys (Magadi, 2011). Secondary data is not always reliable and is often accompanied by several disadvantages (Grace, 2017). The secondary data used was collected between 2003 and 2008 in sub-Saharan Africa (Magadi, 2011). However, the analysis of the data for the use of this study was not conducted until 2011. By this point in time, the collected data had already become somewhat outdated. Changes in rates of malnutrition or incidences of cases of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa likely changed within the gap between the collection and analysis of this data. Furthermore, the data was collected to examine a set of questions that differed from the questions asked by Magadi (Grace, 2017). The questions asked for the use of the original study

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