Guidelines for measuring national HIV prevalence in population-based surveys
UNAIDS/WHO working group on global HIV/AIDS and STI surveillance
ISBN 92 4 159370 9
The guidelines have been developed to assist surveillance officers and programme managers involved in HIV/AIDS surveillance activities in planning and conducting populationbased HIV prevalence surveys. The document describes the various processes involved in planning a survey (including survey design, sampling methods, HIV strategies, questionnaire design, budget planning, ethical considerations and survey operations) and conducting a population-based survey (including field operations, HIV testing and data management). Finally, it provides guidelines on how to analyse and reconcile the results obtained from national population-based surveys with those obtained from sentinel surveillance to produce an estimate of HIV prevalence in a country.
The purpose of this document is not to provide detailed instructions on how to conduct population-based surveys but rather to give an overview of the major issues that need to be considered when planning and conducting such surveys. More detailed instructions on how to implement population-based surveys are available from various sources, such as the UNICEF (2000) manual on multiple indicator cluster surveys or the model manuals on how to implement demographic and health surveys (MEASURE DHS+, 2005a), which can also be used to train local staff.