Vaccination coverage quality indicators (VCQI): A flexible collection of Stata programs for standardized survey data analysis

Household surveys are a vital source of data on childhood vaccination in low- and middle-income countries. To evaluate effectiveness of government vaccination programs, the World Health Organization (WHO) has developed a set of outcome indicators that may be calculated from survey data. In this talk, I describe our collection of Stata programs—called Vaccination Coverage Quality Indicators (VCQI)—that WHO makes freely available so survey analysts can calculate those indicators in a consistent and transparent manner from surveys that can vary in many specific details. Although the collection consists of more than 300 ado-programs, the survey analyst interacts only with a single do-file—a "control program" that orchestrates calls to the other programs, as needed. Only moderate Stata skills are required for an analyst to adapt and run VCQI control programs. This work has prompted several improvements in Stata’s survey estimation commands, and the collection includes useful extensions to Stata’s survey capabilities (for example, meaningful confidence intervals when 0 or 100% of respondents have the outcome). Most of VCQI’s programs are highly interdependent and focused on the specific topic of childhood vaccination, but several are generically useful for survey data analysis.