RIECE Panel Data (RPD)

The survey started in June 2016, targeting children one to four years old in 23 Tambons of Mahasarakham and Kalasin provinces, where the RIECE Thailand project started. Therefore, we call the data “RIECE Panel Data (RPD).” A Tambon in the survey area consists of 8 to 24 villages and is Thailand’s smallest official local governmental organization. We began the sampling by asking village health volunteers who lived within the villages to conduct the census to collect data on the number of eligible children in each village.

Each village was categorized into three groups based on the number of eligible children relative to other villages in the same Tambon.
1) Small villages: villages whose number of eligible children was less than the 30th percentile.
2) Medium villages: villages whose number of eligible children was between the 30th-70th percentile.
3) Large villages: villages whose number of eligible children was larger than the 70th percentile.

One small, two medium, and one large village were randomly chosen from each Tambon, for a total of 92 villages. Two more small villages were selected from two Tambons, for a total of 94 villages, because the original small villages from these two Tambons had less than three eligible children. Our targeted children were aged between one and four years old in the chosen villages. However, some refused or their primary caregivers were unavailable for an interview during the survey period. We also included children aged five who lived in the same household as the targeted children, and their primary caregivers were available for interview (41 children). The survey mistakenly included 21 newborns as well. The total number of samples from this group was 1,040 children from 886 households in 94 villages.

In addition, to follow up on the children from the 2015 survey of the RIECE Thailand project, we kept all children from the 94 villages in the sample (327 children, and additionally chose the children from the 2015 survey who lived in two or three of the largest villages in each of those 23 Tambons not yet included in the 94 villages drawn above. The last group comprises 299 children from 47 villages (two villages for each Tambon except one with three villages).

To sum up, the RIECE panel sample at the beginning of the 2016 survey consisted of 1,666 children aged between zero and six years old from 23 Tambobs (21 Tambons in Mahasarakham province and 2 Tambons in Kalasin province).