The DHS Program

Dataset Registration Rationale

The DHS Program datasets are publicly available and can be downloaded free of charge for research purposes. Why, then, do you need to register?

To ensure that The DHS Program meets host-country agreements. One of the guiding principles of The DHS Program is the recognition that the host country of each DHS Program survey is the owner of the resulting data. In keeping with this principle, The DHS Program has agreements with host-country governments that allow the Program to keep the resulting data in the DHS data repository. The repository ensures that all DHS Program datasets are maintained in one place and enables comparative analysis over time for a single country and/or across countries. Agreements with host-country governments include commitments that The DHS Program will ensure that the data are used by real people with legitimate purposes. For example, many countries do not allow DHS data to be used for non-research (i.e. commercial purposes). To abide by this commitment, The DHS Program asks for users to register for data access.
Contact with users. The Program occasionally needs to contact dataset users. This is most commonly done in order to issue dataset corrections that are identified after dissemination.
Added protections for sensitive HIV and GIS data. Because there are additional ethical concerns for sharing HIV prevalence data and GPS coordinates, users requesting HIV or GIS data are required to sign a digital consent that acknowledges the terms of use. This is an added measure to protect the anonymity of survey respondents.

Other information of note:

The information you provide us is never shared with anyone outside of The DHS Program or USAID. Read more in our privacy policy.
If you are looking for a generic dataset to use for learning/teaching purposes, please download our open access model datasets.
If you need help accessing DHS datasets, please review our Using DHS Datasets for Analysis YouTube tutorial videos.
For questions or comments about obtaining data, please contact archive@dhsprogram.com.

Download Datasets

The DHS Program is authorized to distribute, at no cost, unrestricted survey data files for legitimate academic research. Registration is required for access to data.

Guide to Using Datasets

Guide to DHS Statistics DHS Recode Manual DHS Tabulation Plan FAQs

SELECT dcr.* FROM Data_Custom_Render dcr, CustomElementModules cem WHERE (dcr.PageID IN (?,?,?,?)) AND dcr.VersionState=? AND (dcr.ModuleID = cem.ID OR dcr.ModuleID <= 0) ORDER BY dcr.ControlID, dcr.PageID DESC, dcr.VersionID DESC

Application Variables: activesubsites=1,2,5,6,8,17,18,19,20,21,22,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58 adf=Struct (89) adfscheduler=Struct (0) applicationname=site1 assocpubdocs=Struct (4) blogcache=Struct (4) cachedimages=Struct (32) cacheinfocache=Struct (53) confidentiality=Array (5) controlinstance_toplevel_cache=Struct (126) covid_articlecount=10 covid_newsarticlecount=49 covid_pressreleasecount=4 covid_pubcount=3 cs_elementcache=Struct (10) cs_resourcesmissing=Struct (0) cs_rewriterulescache=Struct (21) cs_subsitecachemanager=Struct (28) customerinfo=Complex type customerscope=Struct (21) custommodulecache=Struct (21) defaultconfidentiality=2 dhspagesyncdata=Struct (1) itemsecuritycache=Struct (31) languagenames=Struct (51) languages=Struct (51) lastknownchange=Struct (18) lastupdate=Struct (14) metadatacache=Struct (4) pendingstubrequests=Struct (0) rsscache=Struct (2) search_archive_next_clean=2024-07-03 12:12:03 serverstatus=Struct (1) site=Struct (74) sitescope=Struct (9) styleids=Struct (248) stylenames=Struct (248) subsitecache=Struct (46) subsitecachebysecuritypageid=Struct (46) templatecache=Struct (28) templatedefaultsecuritycache=Struct (60) templateenforcedsecuritycache=Struct (60) treecache=Struct (25) twittercache=Struct (2) typefactory=Complex type youtubecache=Struct (3)

CGI Variables: AUTH_PASSWORD= AUTH_TYPE= AUTH_USER= CERT_COOKIE= CERT_FLAGS= CERT_ISSUER= CERT_KEYSIZE= CERT_SECRETKEYSIZE= CERT_SERIALNUMBER= CERT_SERVER_ISSUER= CERT_SERVER_SUBJECT= CERT_SUBJECT= CF_TEMPLATE_PATH=C:\inetpub\wwwroot\dhs\data\Registration-Rationale.cfm CONTENT_LENGTH=0 CONTENT_TYPE= CONTEXT_PATH= GATEWAY_INTERFACE=CGI/1.1 HTTPS=off HTTPS_KEYSIZE= HTTPS_SECRETKEYSIZE= HTTPS_SERVER_ISSUER= HTTPS_SERVER_SUBJECT= HTTP_ACCEPT=*/* HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING=gzip, br, zstd, deflate HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE= HTTP_CONNECTION= HTTP_COOKIE= HTTP_HOST=preview.dhsprogram.com HTTP_REFERER= HTTP_URL=/data/Registration-Rationale.cfm HTTP_USER_AGENT=Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com) LOCAL_ADDR=10.0.0.111 PATH_INFO= PATH_TRANSLATED=C:\inetpub\wwwroot\dhs\data\Registration-Rationale.cfm QUERY_STRING= REMOTE_ADDR=10.0.0.149 REMOTE_HOST=10.0.0.149 REMOTE_USER= REQUEST_METHOD=GET SCRIPT_NAME=/data/Registration-Rationale.cfm SERVER_NAME=preview.dhsprogram.com SERVER_PORT=80 SERVER_PORT_SECURE=0 SERVER_PROTOCOL=HTTP/1.1 SERVER_SOFTWARE=Microsoft-IIS/10.0 WEB_SERVER_API=

Request Parameters: anonnoreadelements= applockname=CS_App_Site1_1 archiveemail=archive@dhsprogram.com assetsdir=/assets/ author_approve_whereclause=(VersionState = 2) authormode=0 authorok=1 browser=Struct (13) browserallincluded=1 cachefilesused=1 cachestatus=Complex type cfflushcount=0 cgivars=Struct (49) cloudfrontkeypairid=K3LSHNFSZFMIUC cloudfronturl=d1vyaiefsqy4pf constants=Complex type cors.isCorsRequest=NO cp=Struct (123) cs_init_timings=Struct (23) cs_isdashboardcmd=0 cs_request_start_memory=3500915712 cs_runningdashboardcmdcode=0 csrftoken=2E71C7995ADF45A68C325ECAD8322AB98137BFF4 customerinfo=Complex type customsearch=Struct (11) dbdsn=measure_db debugstate=Struct (1) dhspagesyncdata=Struct (1) disablehideformenus=0 dsource=dhs_legacy_live editmode=0 element=Struct (42) elementrundetail=Struct (0) elementsrun=0 environment=Struct (5) finalreportids=5,26,21,10,18,30,39 finalreportna=139,315,445,488,107,138,459,518 formattedtimestamp=2024-07-03 01:28:43 hivbold=1,3,8,9 imgdir=/images/ includerootdir=/ initialsiteid=1 initticks=1719970123673 jswarnmessage= lockid=0 mainpage=Struct (84) maxperms=Complex type modewhereclause=(VersionState = 2) modewhereclause_page=(VersionState = 2) noauthorreason= nondashboardincludedone=1 obcountires=EG,ZM package=Struct (0) page=Struct (84) pageperms=Complex type pagesync=Struct (4) params=Struct (1) params_formfields= params_urlfields= previewmode=0 readmodewhereclause=(VersionState = 2) renderelementdata=Struct (0) renderfordiff=0 renderforprint=0 renderstate=Struct (73) req_cam_callcount=1 req_inittimestamp=2024-07-03 01:28:43.657 req_sequenceid=56920 req_startticks=1719970123657 rootdir=/ rootpath= rooturldatasetadmin=https://preview.dhsprogram.com/data/dataset_admin samesite_value= serverdatasource=commonspot-sites sessionlockname=Session_1_C7D82849DE7EB188F22B52E573D28BBD.cfusion sessionstring=1_C7D82849DE7EB188F22B52E573D28BBD.cfusion site=Struct (74) siteid=1 styleids=Struct (248) stylenames=Struct (248) subsite=Struct (0) subsitecache=Struct (46) subsitecachebysecuritypageid=Struct (46) subsiteid=5 templaterootdir=/ timestamp={ts '2024-07-03 01:28:43'} trustcachestatus=1 typefactory=Complex type udslockname=CS_Customer_commonspot-users updatingschemas=0 user=Struct (30) usersdatasource=commonspot-users wanterrorsrethrown=0 warnmessage= xmlbrowser=Struct (13)

Session Variables: _csrf_token=2E71C7995ADF45A68C325ECAD8322AB98137BFF4 adf=Struct (0) authormode=0 contributemode=read currentpageid=0 debugmode=0 debugstate=Struct (1) editmode=0 environment=Struct (5) hasusertempfiles=0 language=Struct (216) lastupdate=Struct (2) lastuserupdate=1719970123673 lockid=0 lockobjectid=0 lockobjecttype= locktype= logintime= ownedobjecttypes= pendingapprovalpages= pendingapprovals= previewmode=0 requestedversiontimestamp= sessionid=C7D82849DE7EB188F22B52E573D28BBD.cfusion sessionstring=1_C7D82849DE7EB188F22B52E573D28BBD.cfusion urltoken=CFID=2272877&CFTOKEN=2d9fd966063131c4-9E14B177-E4BE-E07E-553E065A0E8996AF&jsessionid=C7D82849DE7EB188F22B52E573D28BBD.cfusion usagelist= user=Struct (30) xmlbrowser=Struct (13) xmlenvironment=Struct (5)

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