Published In

American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-2016

Subjects

Sanitation -- Health aspects -- India, Sanitation -- Social aspects -- India

Abstract

Although large-scale programs, like India's Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC), have improved latrine coverage in rural settings, evidence suggests that actual use is suboptimal. However, the reliability of methods to assess latrine use is uncertain. We assessed the reliability of reported use, the standard method, by comparing survey-based responses against passive latrine use monitors (PLUMs) through a cross-sectional study among 292 households in 25 villages in rural Odisha, India, which recently received individual household latrines under the TSC. PLUMs were installed for 2 weeks and householders responded to surveys about their latrine use behavior. Reported use was compared with PLUM results using Bland–Altman (BA) plots and concordance statistics. Reported use was higher than corresponding PLUM-recorded events across the range of comparisons. The mean reported “usual” daily events per household (7.09, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 6.51, 7.68) was nearly twice that of the PLUM-recorded daily average (3.62, 95% CI = 3.29, 3.94). There was poor agreement between “usual” daily latrine use and the average daily PLUM-recorded events (ρc = 0.331, 95% CI = 0.242, 0.427). Moderate agreement (ρc = 0.598, 95% CI = 0.497, 0.683) was obtained when comparing daily reported use during the previous 48 hours with the average daily PLUM count. Reported latrine use, though already suggesting suboptimal adoption, likely exaggerates the actual level of uptake of latrines constructed under the program. Where reliance on self-reports is used, survey questions should focus on the 48 hours prior to the date of the survey rather than asking about “usual” latrine use behavior.

Description

© The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Originally published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and can be found online: https://doi.org/10.4269/ajtmh.16-0102

DOI

10.4269/ajtmh.16-0102

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/18552

Share

COinS