Guatemalan Survey of Family Health (EGSF)

The Guatemalan Survey of Family Health, known as EGSF from its name in Spanish, was designed to examine the way in which rural Guatemalan families and individuals cope with childhood illness and pregnancy, and the role of ethnicity, poverty, social support and health beliefs in this process. It is part of a larger study designed and carried out by Noreen Goldman (Princeton University) and Anne Pebley (RAND), in collaboration with the Nutritional Institute of Central America and Panama (INCAP) in Guatemala, with funding from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The EGSF sampling frame includes all rural communities in four of Guatemala's 22 departments. While the survey is not based on a nationally representative sample, the four departments included in the study were selected to encompass a wide range of social, cultural, economic and environmental conditions in rural Guatemala. Household interviews were conducted in 4,792 households and individual interviews with 2,872 women ages 18 to 35. In each of the 60 sampled communities, we also carried out a community survey in which 3 key informants and a sample of biomedical and nonbiomedical health care providers were interviewed.