RESEARCH ARTICLE
Logistic Regression Additive Model: Application to Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey Data
W.J. Dlamini1, *, S.F. Melesse2, H.G. Mwambi2
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2017Volume: 10
First Page: 294
Last Page: 302
Publisher ID: TOPHJ-10-294
DOI: 10.2174/1874944501710010294
Article History:
Received Date: 21/08/2017Revision Received Date: 21/11/2017
Acceptance Date: 05/12/2017
Electronic publication date: 29/12/2017
Collection year: 2017
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
The well-being of a child reflects household, community and national involvement on family health. Currently, the global under-five child mortality rate is falling faster compared to any time in the past two decades. However, the progress remained insufficient to match the Millennium Development Goal 4 targets especially in the Sub-Saharan African region.
Objective:
This study aims to visualize and identify factors associated with under-five child mortality in Tanzania, which is essential for formulating appropriate health program and policies.
Methods:
The survey data used for this paper was taken from 2011-2012 Tanzania HIV/AIDS and Malaria Indictor Survey. The study utilizes statistical model that accommodate a response, which is dichotomous and account for non-linear relationship between binary response and independent variable. Generalized additive models was adopted for the analysis. The sample was selected using stratified, two-stage cluster sampling that gave a sample size of 10494 mothers. The model was fitted using proc gam in statistical analysis software version 9.3.
Results:
The results showed that human immunodeficiency virus status of the mother and breastfeeding were associated with under-five child mortality. Furthermore, the results also indicated that under-five child mortality had a quadratic pattern relationship with the number of children ever born, the number of children alive, the number of children five or under in a household and child birth order number.
Conclusion:
Based on the study, our findings confirmed that under-five mortality is a serious problem in the Tanzania. Therefore, there is a need to intensify child health interventions to reduce the under-five mortality rate even further with the development of policies and programs to reduce under-five child mortality.
