Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) Data

Description

MICS datasets have been carried out over the last couple decades in over 100 countries, reporting survey data on key indicators especially on the well-being of women and children. They are designed to be representative, with the average sample size in Round 5 of 11,000 households (though it varies greatly from one dataset to another). It has been used to inform the Millennium Development Goals and the Sustainable Development Goals. Survey data is recorded by having trained field-work teams carrying out face-to-face interviews. They are currently on MICS6 (Round 6), but all previous rounds of MICS are also available.

Each dataset download may include a variety of files, depending on the round and the country. The number of topics has increased throughout the years, and so in the later datasets you will likely find more variables (and files, too). However, many files are consistent throughout all the datasets. The latest MICS dataset often includes the following files:

household - hh.sav
Household members - hl.sav
Women in reproductive age (15-49 years of age) - wm.sav
Mothers or primary caretakers of children under the age of five - ch.sav
Birth history of ever-married Women in reproductive age (15-49 years of age) - bh.sav
Miscarriage, Stillbirth abd Abortion module administered from women in reproductive age (15-49 years of age) - ab.sav
Men in reproductive age (15-49 years of age) - mn.sav
Mothers or primary caretakers of children 5-17 - fs.sav
a text (.txt) file that contains more specific metadata about that particular dataset in question

The MICS questionnaires and sampling tools in use throughout the years are all also available for viewing. The characteristics of the data such as sample size, weights, variable labels and information on recoded or imputed variables can be found within the survey archive which can be found at the following url: http://mics.unicef.org/surveys. You will have to navigate from there to your survey in the list, and then click on "survey findings" underneath the "Report" heading. This will open a pdf document and on one of the early pages there will be a table called "Survey Sample and Implementation". This contains essential information such as date of survey, sample sizes of each segment of people, and some demographics of the sample size. This survey archive will also contain the questionnaires and information on the sampling and implementation of the survey.

Metadata

Metadata Component	Description
Theme	Health & Well-being (of women and children especially)
Source	UNICEF
Purpose	Monitor the change in well-being of women and children and identify issues needing most attention
Time Frame	MICS surveys have been conducted over the last 23 years.
File Type	Socioeconomic
File Format	.sav (SPSS)
Structure	one household or individual per row
Projection and coordinate system	N/A
Extent	116 countries
Resolution or scale	N/A

Common Problems

You are required to have an account to download the data. It may take some time to approve your request for a dataset. Please sign up for an account early on, and request to access datasets of interest to you as early as you can. Do not just look at the infographic, as you must download the entire dataset and cite the original data. (If there is an infographic available; however, it is still a great resource for introducing you to the data)
Pay attention to the weighting of the data. As the sample is not self-weighting, sample weights are used for reporting survey results. A more detailed description of the sample design can be found in Appendix A: Sample Design. In the "survey findings" document for your particular dataset there will be lots of information (for example, Mongolia's MICS6 report was 695 pages long).

Downloading Instructions

Go to the url: https://mics.unicef.org/surveys
Scroll or use the filters to search for your dataset in question. Surveys are automatically sorted by most recent (some of which have no been completed yet) at the top.
In the far right column, if the dataset is available for download it will say "available". Click on this to download the dataset.
It will download as a .zip file with the layers mentioned above, all files in .sav format. You will need SPSS to open these files, or else to convert them to another format for use, like .csv

Restrictions on Use

A “read_me” .txt file comes with a dataset download and includes metadata and access conditions. Double check your metadata file, but it appears that all the datasets are free to use if they are for research purposes, provided that the research objective is stated (it asks you for this objective when you request an account to download datasets) before you download the data. Also note that these .txt files contain the contact information of people whom you must send copies of all the reports and publications that you make with the MICS dataset (class project write-ups excluded).