Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) are nationally-representative household surveys that provide data for a wide range of monitoring and impact evaluation indicators in the areas of population, health, and nutrition.Standard DHS Surveys have large sample sizes (usually between 5,000 and 30,000 households) and typically are conducted about every 5 years, to allow comparisons over time. Interim DHS Surveys focus on the collection of information on key performance monitoring indicators but may not include data for all impact evaluation measures (such as mortality rates). These surveys are conducted between rounds of DHS surveys and have shorter questionnaires than DHS surveys. Although nationally representative, these surveys generally have smaller samples than DHS surveys.
Survey program and data
DHS mainly focus on developing countries. It provides panel data such as domestic violence, children health, education, HIV prevalence. Most of the data were acquired by standard DHS surveys, therefore making inter-country comparison possible. It is a excellent research database. I highly recommend this.
Tips for using the product
Using the data in DHS requires prior registration. You should sign up an account and register for the access right. It usually takes around one day to approve. Data in STATA format, which is a commonly used software for data analysis, is available.