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The Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change Project (MDICP)
This is the homepage of the Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change Project (MDICP), led initially by Susan Watkins and Eliya Zulu, and subsequently by Hans-Peter Kohler, Jere Behrman, Agnes Chimbiri, and Angela Chimwaza. The MDICP is formally affiliated with the College of Medicine and the Kamuzu College of Nursing in Malawi.
The MDICP was originally developed as a sister project of the Kenya Diffusion and Ideational Change Project (KDICP), but with a larger sample and greater geographical dispersion. Both the KDICP and the MDICP aim to examine the role of social interactions in changing demographic attitudes and behavior.
The first two waves of the MDICP (carried out in 1998 and 2001) focused on two key empirical questions: the roles of social interactions in (1) the acceptance (or rejection) of modern contraceptive methods and of smaller ideal family size; and (2) the diffusion of knowledge of AIDS symptoms and transmission mechanisms and the evaluation of acceptable strategies of protection against AIDS.
Beginning with the third wave in 2004, the MDICP expanded in several directions: (1) A sample of adolescents (age 15-24, married and unmarried) was added to the base sample of ever-married women and their husbands; (2) Biomarkers for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections were collected from all respondents who consented, and the results were provided to those who requested them; (3) GPS coordinates were collected for all sampled households.
The fourth wave of the MDICP is scheduled for 2006, when the project will expand further to include the collection of data on the role of social interactions in altering the consequences of the AIDS epidemic.
The MDICP includes two major associated surveys: the Family Transfers Project (FTP), which was carried out in 1999; and the Malawi Religion Project (MRP), which begun in 2005. The MDICP has also collected semi-structured interviews with a subsample of survey respondents in 1999 ('Let's Chat' interviews), and is related to a variety of smaller and more localized qualitative projects.
All survey data collected by the Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change Project are available for download free of charge.
Three types of survey data are available for public use. These include:
• cross-sectional, individual-level data for men and women;
• cross-sectional, couple data for husbands and wives;
• longitudinal, individual-level data for men and women;
• longitudinal, couple data for husband and wives.Qualitative data collected by the Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change Project are also available for download.
The Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change Project has been funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), grants R01-HD37276, R01-HD044228-01, R01-HD050142, R01-HD/MH-41713-0. The MDICP has also been funded by the Rockfeller Foundation, grant RF-99009#199. The MDICP received ethical approval from institutional review boards at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Malawi.
Quick links:
Kenya
Transfers
Survey data
Qualitative
projects
Data quality
People
Papers
last updated December 14, 2005
Please direct comments or questions about this site to pfleming@sas.upenn.edu