South Africa - SAPRIN Mental Health Data Prize 2022

v1: Dataset for public distribution.

2022-08-01

v1: Dataset for public distribution.

SAPRIN (South African Population Research Infrastructure Network) is a network of health and demographic surveillance sites in South Africa that consists of five Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) nodes located in South Africa.

Between them, the nodes follow more than 75 000 households (320 000 individuals) longitudinally through regular surveillance visits. Shortly after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, SAPRIN implemented a shared Covid-19 surveillance programme in the MRC/Wits University Agincourt HDSS in Bushbuckridge District, Mpumalanga, established in 1993; the University of Limpopo DIMAMO HDSS in the Capricorn District of Limpopo, established in 1996, and and the Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI) HDSS in uMkhanyakude District, KwaZulu-Natal, established in 2000. This Covid-19 surveillance is still being conducted in these three SAPRIN nodes.

As part of the Covid-19 surveillance, the PHQ-2 and GAD-2 screening questions were administered to household respondents in Agincourt, DIMAMO and AHRI. By the end of 2021, a total of 90 000 such interviews were conducted, with approximately 12 000 interviews in the target group of 14-24-year-olds. Although the PHQ-2 and GAD-2 questions on their own are not likely to be of interest to the Mental Data prize participants, several factors make this dataset to be of greater interest:

The interviews can be directly linked to the detailed longitudinal surveillance data in the three nodes, providing interesting contextual data to this set of observations on depression and anxiety during the span of the covid epidemic from its start across several epidemic waves of infection in South Africa.

These contextual data include:

- Individual-level data on partnership status, educational attainment, and employment, including self-reported health status.

- Household data of the households the respondents are members of, including household composition and whether the respondents' parents are co-resident with them.

- Household socio-economic status.

- Household asset status

- A large set of Covid-19 specific data, including vaccine acceptance and hesitancy data and the impact of Covid-19 measures on the household.

The Covid-19 specific interviews were conducted from May 2020 and are still ongoing, with more than one interview with some participants at different points in time, allowing for the analysis of temporal effects.

The SAPRIN Mental Health Data Prize 2022 datasets consists of six types of the Demographic surveillance datasets :

1. SAPRIN Individual exposure episodes. This dataset splits the basic surveillance episodes at calendar year-end and at the date when the age in years (birthday) of an individual change. In the case of women who have given births, episodes are split at the time of delivery as well.

2. SAPRIN Individual status observations. This dataset consists of status observations such as education, employment, employment and partnership status of an individual, that recur at more or less regular interval per individual over the study period.

3. SAPRIN household status observations. This dataset consists of socio-economic status observations for a household. This data is collected from a household proxy respondent, preferably the head of household or any next available senior adult resident household member at more or less regular interval over the duration of the study.

4. SAPRIN household asset status observations. This dataset consists of asset status observations for a household. This data is collected from a household proxy respondent, preferably the head of household or any next available senior adult resident household member at more or less regular interval over the duration of the study.

5.SAPRIN individual COVID-19. This dataset consists of Covid-related status observations pertaining to Covid-19 diagnosis, vaccination status, attitudes to vaccination and the PHQ-2 and GAD-2 mental health related questions.

6.SAPRIN household COVID-19. This dataset consists of Covid-19 related household level status observations, household awareness, and impact of Covid-19 control measures on the household.

Event history data

Individual and household interviews