Methodology

Maternal mortality surveys are usually done as an add-on module to another more general survey of women of reproductive age – the DHS surveys are an example of this.

Figure 4 show s a page of the questionnaire which includes the sisterhood questions. Click on the image to zoom in or click here to open it as a PDF in a new window.

You can see from Figure 4 that the woman interviewed is asked about all her siblings, one by one, male or female, alive or dead. However by Question MM09 males, living sisters, or sisters who died before age 12 have been screened out and the focus is on sisters who have died during the reproductive years.