Spotlight

Sam Clark Awarded 2009-10 CSDE Seed Grant

CSDE’s small grants program has awarded a seed grant to affiliate Sam Clark. His project, "A New Look at Indirect Methods for Estimating Demographic Indicators: Evaluation, Validation and Reformulation," will study methods to improve estimation of key demographic indicators in Africa.

Proposal Abstract:
A variety of indirect estimation techniques are used to calculate values for critical demographic indicators in Africa, such as mortality of both children and adults. These methods were developed during the middle of the 20th century and used widely in the developing world until recently. Africa is the only major world region that still relies heavily on these methods, and the current situation in Africa requires that these methods be re-examined and modified to continue providing accurate estimates. The most critical and urgent problem is that the HIV pandemic has broken one of the fundamental assumptions underlying many of these methods - that the risk of dying faced by members of a household (most importantly mothers and their children) is not correlated.

The study proposed here will compare values for demographic indicators measured using both standard and improved indirect methods to values for those same indicators calculated directly from high quality data. This validation study will allow us to investigate the validity and reliability of the indirect methods and to carefully quantify both the bias and measurement components of the overall difference (error) between indirect and direct results.

Results from this study will allow us to better understand the source of both components of the error, and building on that, to improve the methods to minimize both. The preliminary results produced by this study will provide the basis for a full scale study and an application(s) to the Wellcome Trust and/or NIH to support that work.