Kenya - Demographic and Health Survey 2014, Kenya

The sample for the 2014 KDHS was drawn from a master sampling frame, the Fifth National Sample Survey and Evaluation Programme (NASSEP V). This is a frame that the KNBS currently operates to conduct household-based surveys throughout Kenya. Development of the frame began in 2012, and it contains a total of 5,360 clusters split into four equal subsamples. These clusters were drawn with a stratified probability proportional to size sampling methodology from 96,251 enumeration areas (EAs) in the 2009 Kenya Population and Housing Census. The 2014 KDHS used two subsamples of the NASSEP V frame that were developed in 2013. Approximately half of the clusters in these two subsamples were updated between November 2013 and September 2014. Kenya is divided into 47 counties that serve as devolved units of administration, created in the new constitution of 2010. During the development of the NASSEP V, each of the 47 counties was stratified into urban and rural strata; since Nairobi county and Mombasa county have only urban areas, the resulting total was 92 sampling strata.

The 2014 KDHS was designed to produce representative estimates for most of the survey indicators at the national level, for urban and rural areas separately, at the regional (former provincial) level, and for selected indicators at the county level. In order to meet these objectives, the sample was designed to have 40,300 households from 1,612 clusters spread across the country, with 995 clusters in rural areas and 617 in urban areas. Samples were selected independently in each sampling stratum, using a two-stage sample design. In the first stage, the 1,612 EAs were selected with equal probability from the NASSEP V frame. The households from listing operations served as the sampling frame for the second stage of selection, in which 25 households were selected from each cluster.

The interviewers visited only the preselected households, and no replacement of the preselected households was allowed during data collection. The Household Questionnaire and the Woman's Questionnaire were administered in all households, while the Man's Questionnaire was administered in every second household. Because of the non-proportional allocation to the sampling strata and the fixed sample size per cluster, the survey was not self-weighting. The resulting data have, therefore, been weighted to be representative at the national, regional, and county levels.

For further details on sample selection, see Appendix A of the final report.


A total of 39,679 households were selected for the sample, of which 36,812 were found occupied at the time of the fieldwork. Of these households, 36,430 were successfully interviewed, yielding an overall household response rate of 99 percent. The shortfall of households occupied was primarily due to structures that were found to be vacant or destroyed and households that were absent for an extended period of time.

As noted, the 2014 KDHS sample was divided into halves, with one half of households receiving the full Household Questionnaire, the full Woman’s Questionnaire, and the Man’s Questionnaire and the other half receiving the short Household Questionnaire and the short Woman’s Questionnaire. The household response rate for the full Household Questionnaire was 99 percent, as was the household response rate for the short Household Questionnaire.

In the households selected for and interviewed using the full questionnaires, a total of 15,317 women were identified as eligible for the full Woman’s Questionnaire, of whom 14,741 were interviewed, generating a response rate of 96 percent. A total of 14,217 men were identified as eligible in these households, of whom 12,819 were successfully interviewed, generating a response rate of 90 percent.

In the households selected for and interviewed with the short questionnaires, a total of 16,855 women were identified as eligible for the short Woman’s Questionnaire, of whom 16,338 were interviewed, yielding a response rate of 97 percent.

Response rates are lower in the urban sample than in the rural sample, more so for men. The principal reason for non-response among both eligible men and eligible women was failure to find them at home despite repeated visits to the household. The lower response rates for men reflect the more frequent and longer absences of men from the household