Description

For women who want to have a/another child, PREFTIMECH (V603) reports the amount of time, in months or years, they would like to wait before the birth of a/another child (top-coded at 20 years). The complementary variable PREFTIMECH (V604) reports responses to the same question, but in terms of years only, top-coded at 6+ years.

PREFTIMECH includes women who are either pregnant or at risk of pregnancy. However, the definition of "at risk of pregnancy" varies across samples, and the way this variable was asked and calculated also changed over time; see Comparability.

Comparability

IPUMS-DHS users should note of universe differences across samples. In all cases, the universe included women who were either pregnant or at risk of getting pregnant at the time of the interview. Most commonly, women at risk of pregnancy were defined as those who were 1) not infecund and 2) not sterilized. However, as noted below, the criteria for "at risk of pregnancy" varies slightly across samples, which may affect comparability.

Comparability - Standard DHS

PREFTIMECH (V603) is included in the standard DHS questionnaire for Phase I forward, and the way the data was collected varied across phases.

In Phase I and II, this variable consisted of two separate questions: the woman was first asked how long from the date of the interview she would like to wait before the birth of her next child. If she responded "Don't know," then she was asked how old she would like her youngest child to be at the time of her next birth. Women with no children at the time of the interview who were asked this question were coded as "Missing." In Phase III forward, this variable was reduced to just the one question asking how long the woman would like to wait before the birth of her next child.

Universe