SAPRIN Individual Surveillance Episodes 2021 Datasets

The ‘South African Population Research Infrastructure Network’ (SAPRIN) is a national research infrastructure funded through the Department of Science and Innovation and hosted by the South African Medical Research Council. One of SAPRIN’s initial goals has been to harmonise and share the longitudinal data from the three current Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) Nodes. These long-standing nodes are the MRC/Wits University Agincourt HDSS in Bushbuckridge District, Mpumalanga, established in 1993, with a current population of 112 831 people; the University of Limpopo DIMAMO HDSS in the Capricorn District of Limpopo, established in 1996, with a current population of 32 026; and the Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI) HDSS in uMkhanyakude District, KwaZulu-Natal, established in 2000, with a current population of 146 751.

For an individual to eligible for inclusion in the surveillance, the individual must be a member of a household resident within the geographic boundaries of a SAPRIN node. For a household to be resident, it must have at least one household member who is resident within the surveillance area. Households and household membership are self-defined by the household informant interviewed by the fieldworker at their place of residence (or during a telephonic interview with the household informant). Household members so identified could be resident, that is sleep the majority of nights at this household's place of residence, or could be resident elsewhere (usually outside the surveillance area, but potentially within the surveillance area, in which case they will be a resident household member of the household resident at that place - In this dataset, individuals are members of a single household at a time, and in this example, the non-resident member of the household who is resident elsewhere in the surveillance area, will be reflected in the dataset as a resident member of the household this individual is co-resident with and not also as a non-resident member of this household). The resident status of household members can change: they can move out of the surveillance area to be resident elsewhere, but still be considered household members (so-called 'temporary migration'), such cases are reflected in the data as episodes of external residence; or temporary migrants can return to take up residence again with the household, initiating a new episode of residence internal to the surveillance area.

In addition to these periods of internal and external residence punctuated by in- and outmigration, surveillance episodes can be started by the birth of an individual, if the child is born to a resident mother, their birth starts a period of internal residency for the child; if the child is born to a mother who is a temporary migrant (externally resident) and the child is considered to be a member of the household, a period of external residency ensues for the child. Residency episodes (whether internal or external) are of course terminated by the death of the individual, if that happens whilst the individual is under surveillance.
All SAPRIN nodes conducted a baseline household census at their beginning and all individuals enrolled at this point start their surveillance episode with enumeration. However, nodes may extend their area of surveillance at certain points after the initial household census, by doing another baseline census in these new areas, and all individuals enrolled then, also start their surveillance episodes with enumeration. For integrity in the longitudinal surveillance of individuals, the identity of newly encountered individuals is checked against the database and merged with prior records if the individual is already in the database. In the case of newly incorporated areas into the surveillance area, it is entirely possible to find individuals that have previously out-migrated from the surveillance area to reside in this new area, in such cases an individual will have more than one surveillance episode that starts with enumeration, their enumeration in the original baseline census as well as their enumeration in the newly extended surveillance area.

This dataset represents a snapshot of the continually evolving data in the underlying longitudinal databases maintained by the SAPRIN nodes. In these databases the rightmost extend of the individual's surveillance episode is indicated by the data collection date of the last time the individual's membership of a household under surveillance has been confirmed. Each dataset has a right censor date (31 December 2018 for the current version of the dataset) and individual surveillance episodes are terminated at that point if the individual is still under surveillance beyond the cut-off date.
Each individual surveillance episode is associated with a physical location, for internal residency episodes it is the actual place of residence of the individual, for external residence episodes (periods of temporary migration) it is the place of residence of the individual's household. If an individual change their place of residency from one location within the surveillance area to another location still within the surveillance area, the episode at the original location is terminated with a location exit event, and a new episode starts with a location entry event at the destination location. It is also possible for the household the individual is a member of, to change their place of residency in the surveillance area, whilst the individual is externally resident (is a temporary migrant), in which case the individual's external resident episode will also be split with a location exit-entry pair of events.
At every household visit written consent is obtained from the household respondent for continued participation in the surveillance and such consent can be withdrawn. When this happens all household members' surveillance episodes are terminated with a refusal event. It is possible for households to again provide consent to participate in the surveillance after some time, in such cases surveillance events are restarted with a permission event.
As mentioned previously, surveillance episodes are continually extended by the last data collection event if the individual remains under surveillance. In certain cases, individuals may be lost to follow-up and surveillance episodes where the date of last data collection is more than one year prior to the right censor data are terminated as lost to follow up at that last data collection date. Individuals with data collection dates within a year of the right censor date is considered still to be under surveillance up to this last data collection date.
Each surveillance episode contains the identifier of the household the individual is a member of during that episode. Under relatively rare circumstances it is possible for an individual to change household membership whilst still resident at the same location, or to change membership whilst externally resident, in these cases the surveillance episode will be split with a pair of membership end and membership start events. More commonly membership start and end events coincide with location exit and entry events or in- and out-migration events. Memberships also obviously start at birth or enumeration and end at death, refusal to participate or lost to follow-up.
In about half of the cases, individuals have a single episode from first enumeration, birth or in-migration, to their eventual death, out-migration or currently still under surveillance. In the remaining cases, individuals transition from internal residency to external residency via out-migration, or from one location to another via internal migration with a location exit and entry event, or some other rarer form of transition involving membership change, refusal or lost to follow-up. Usually these series of surveillance episodes are continuous in time, with no gaps between episodes, but gaps can form, e.g. when an individual out-migrates and end membership with the household and so is no longer under surveillance, only to return via in-migration at some future date and take up membership with same or different household.

The SAPRIN Individual Surveillance Episodes 2021 Datasets consists of two types of the Demographic surveillance datasets:
1.SAPRIN Individual Surveillance Episodes 2021: Basic Dataset. This dataset contains only the internal and external residency episodes for an individual.
2.SAPRIN Individual Surveillance Episodes 2021: Age-Year-Delivery Dataset. This dataset splits the basic surveillance episodes at calendar year end and at the date when the age in years (birth-day) of an individual changes. In the case of women who have given births, episodes are split at the time of delivery as well.