Abstract: Antenatal care is a preventive obstetric health care program aimed at optimizing maternal fetal outcome through regular monitoring of pregnancy [55]. Even if WHO recommends a minimum of four ANC visits for normal pregnancy, existing evidence from developing countries including Ethiopia indicates there are few women who utilize it due to different reasons. 1127 pregnant women from EDHS of 2011 were used to analyze the determinants of the barriers in number of antenatal care service visits among pregnant women in rural Ethiopia. The data were found to have excess zeros (51.5%); the variance, 7.196, is much higher than its mean, 1.85.Thus several count models such as Poisson, NB, ZIP, ZINB, HP, and HNB regression models were fitted to select the model which best fits the data. Each of these models was compared using SAS version 9.2 by their likelihood ratio test (LR), Voung test and the information criteria’s. Through the analysis, access to modern ANC visits during pregnancy was low in rural Ethiopia than the national value. Lack of awareness, absence of education, heavy workload, poverty, and shortage of health post were significantly associated with not attending ANC visits. Hurdle Poisson regression model was found to be better fitted with data which is characterized by excess zeros and high variability in the non-zero outcomes.
Keywords: ANC; Hurdle; NB; Poisson; Zero-Inflated.
Title: Modeling the Number of Antenatal Care Service Visits Among Pregnant Women in Rural Ethiopia: Zero Inflated and Hurdle Model Specifications
Author: Dawit Sekata
International Journal of Healthcare Sciences
ISSN 2348-5728 (Online)
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