Description of individual and community-level variables of early initiation of breast feeding among mothers of children under 2 years in Ethiopia, 2019
| Variables | Description |
| Maternal age | It is the current age of respondents in years and categorised as 15–24, 25–34 and 35–49. |
| Marital status | This variable indicates the current marital status of the women. It is recoded as ‘married’ if a woman responds as ‘married’ or ‘living with partner’ otherwise ‘unmarried’. |
| Religion | It is a religious group to which the woman associates herself and it was categorised as Orthodox, Protestant, Muslim and Other. Other category includes those women who were traditional or other religious followers. |
| Wealth index | In DHS, the wealth index is constructed using HH asset data via PCA following three steps. National-level wealth quintiles are obtained by assigning the HH score to each de jure HH member, ranking each person in the population by their score and then dividing the ranking into five equal parts as poorest, poorer, middle, richer and richest. In this study, the variable was recoded as poor, middle and rich. |
| Parity | It measures the number of deliveries where pregnancies reached viable gestational age. Parity was recoded as primiparous, multiparous and grand multiparous. |
| Number of ANC visits | DHS guideline categorises number of ANC visits in groups of none, 1–3, and 4 or more. In addition, WHO recommends a minimum of four ANC visits based on a review of the effectiveness of different models of ANC. Hence, we used the same. |
| Type of delivery assistance | We categorised delivery assistance in groups of health professionals, traditional birth attendants, others and no one. |
| Region | Region of residence is typically the first administrative level within the country, or a grouping of the first administrative level. It includes Tigray, Afar, Amara, Oromia, Somali, Benishangul-Gumuz, SNNPR, Gambela, Harari, Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa. |
| Community-level women education | We measured it based on the education level of the respondents. We categorised it as ‘high’ if more than 50% of the women in the cluster had at least attended primary school otherwise ‘low’. |
| Community-level health facility delivery | This factor was generated using the proportion of women who gave birth in the health facilities. It was recoded as ‘high’ if more than 50% women of the cluster gave birth in the health facilities otherwise ‘low’. |
| Community-level ANC utilisation | The variable was categorised as ‘high’ if more than 50% of women of the cluster had used four and above ANC visits otherwise ‘low’. |
| Community wealth level | This community-level factor was derived from HH wealth index data and recoded as ‘high’ if more than 50% of the cluster women were in the middle and above wealth quintiles otherwise ‘low’. |
ANC, antenatal care; DHS, Demographic and Health Survey; HH, household; PCA, principal component analysis; SNNPR, Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region.