Compare methods

	Demographic and Health Survey Analysis	Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices Survey
Field	Development Studies	Development Studies
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1984	2008
Originator	USAID / The DHS Program (ICF)	Family-planning and public-health survey research (WHO; Médecins du Monde)
Type	Nationally representative population and health survey	Structured behavioural survey
Seminal source	Croft, T. N., Marshall, A. M. J., Allen, C. K., et al. (2018). Guide to DHS Statistics: DHS-7. Rockville, MD: ICF, The DHS Program.	World Health Organization. (2008). Advocacy, communication and social mobilization for TB control: a guide to developing knowledge, attitude and practice surveys. Geneva: WHO.
Aliases	DHS, Demographic and Health Survey, DHS Program survey, Standard DHS	KAP survey, KAP study, Knowledge attitudes practices survey, KABP survey
Related	4	4
Summary	The Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) are nationally representative household surveys that provide standardised, internationally comparable data on population, health, and nutrition in low- and middle-income countries. Funded primarily by USAID and implemented through The DHS Program, they use model questionnaires, a complex multi-stage sample design, and a standardised wealth index to produce indicators of fertility, child and maternal mortality, family planning, child nutrition, and disease prevalence that drive health policy and programme monitoring worldwide.	A Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices (KAP) survey is a structured, representative survey that measures what a target population knows about a topic, how it feels and believes about it, and what it actually does. Widely used in public health, water-sanitation-hygiene (WASH), family planning, and nutrition programming, KAP surveys provide the baseline and endline evidence for behaviour-change communication, identifying the gaps between knowledge and practice that interventions are meant to close.