Development of a two-level full factorial model to analyse antenatal HIV data

Abstract

The present study is based on antenatal HIV data collected annually by South Africa’s National Department of Health (NDoH) from 2001 to 2010. The data was obtained by sampling pregnant women attending the clinic for antenatal care for the first time. The main research questions of this study are as follows: 1. Is it possible to develop two-level full factorial models to analyse coded antenatal HIV data for each year? 2. Do the models remain the same over the years? This study describes the development of two-level full factorial models to assist in analysing and understanding coded HIV antenatal sample data from 2001 to 2010. The development of the two-level full factorial models was done by developing twolevel full factorial matrices and using them to estimate HIV risk models. This was done by using one demographic variable at a time for each year, and using all the demographic variables for each year. ANOVA is used to analyse and interpret the data. In this study regression analysis was also directly applied to HIV data without estimating full factorial matrices. The regression analysis was used in developing HIV risk models for all of the ten years. Simple linear regression models were used to model time trends. The study concludes with a description of the findings and a summary of the chapters. Future research possibilities are discussed and recommendations for research are made.