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Measurement models of women’s autonomy using the 1998/1999 India DHS

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Abstract

Research concerning the relationship between female status and demographic behaviour has largely concluded that community level influences are most important, while status and autonomy at the individual level are far less so. This consensus, however, rests on an untested a priori typology of women’s status and tenuous assumptions about the measurement of defined status dimensions on the individual level. To better understand the potential influences of both community and individual elements it is necessary to take a step back and assess the validity of the constructs of autonomy used. This work uses a latent variable measurement modelling framework to test both the dimensionality of women’s status and the appropriateness of using simple additive index scaling in constructing measures of women’s status on the individual level using questions from the Demographic and Health Surveys status-of-women module in India for 1998/1999.

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Notes

  1. The AIC presented here is often referred to as AIC*n. Additionally, the BIC is calculated in a non-conventional way that is more faithful, however, to its initial formulation (Muthén 1998–2000). In each case however, interpretation is the same. Lower information criteria indicate better fitting models.

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Correspondence to John Sandberg.

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Sandberg, J., Rafail, P. Measurement models of women’s autonomy using the 1998/1999 India DHS. J Pop Research 30, 367–381 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12546-013-9117-x

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