TY - RPRT AU - Elkasabi, Mahmoud AU - Assaf, Shireen CY - Rockville, Maryland, USA TI - Accumulating contraceptive calendars across surveys T2 - DHS Working Papers No. 181 PB - ICF PY - 2021 UR - https://www.dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/WP181/WP181.pdf AB - This paper extends the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) Working Paper No. 177 that presented a framework for accumulating retrospective data. In that paper, the accumulation technique, which is widely known as data pooling, was applied to birth history data in DHS surveys. Childhood mortality rates were calculated based on cumulated birth histories, which are also known as accumulated rates. The estimated confidence intervals of the accumulated rates were more narrow than their counterparts from the separate survey datasets. The accumulated birth histories reduced fluctuations in the time series for national and subnational mortality rates, and established time trends that were more stable and reliable than those based on single-survey data. In this paper, we examine another application of the accumulation technique on the contraceptive calendars of DHS surveys from Bangladesh, Egypt, Peru, and Senegal. We examined the consistency of data collected in the contraceptive calendar by comparing monthly contraceptive use across different surveys in overlapping calendars. The results showed some differences in the contraceptive prevalence rate based on the overlapping calendars from two consecutive surveys, particularly in Bangladesh and Egypt. The Peru and Senegal DHS showed more consistent contraceptive prevalence rate estimates between the two sources of data. Some differences were more prevalent for specific contraceptive methods. We accumulated calendar data across surveys of Peru and Senegal, where consistent contraceptive prevalence rate estimates were observed. The accumulated data had more narrow confidence intervals when compared to the trends in the separate datasets. However, the application on calendar data did not show promising potential similar to the application on birth histories as found in the DHS Working Paper No. 177. N1 - For assistance using downloaded citations from The DHS Program, please visit http://dhsprogram.com/publications/Citing-DHS-Publications.cfm. This study was conducted with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through The DHS Program (#720-OAA-18C-00083). The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government. ER -