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Analytical utility of the JMP school water, sanitation and hygiene global monitoring data

Nature Sustainability volume 6, pages 222–232 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Recent progress in the Joint Monitoring Programme’s Sustainable Development Goal 6 monitoring efforts may help build the quantitative evidence base for driving global action around school water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure. To evaluate the analytical value of the expanding database for generating research evidence, we model the relationships between school WASH conditions and student enrolment within select low- and middle-income countries. Using a series of incrementally adjusted linear regressions, we find that there is sufficient variation in the dataset to detect signals of significance with some consistency, including significant associations between the presence and quality of toilets among primary school students and the quality of toilets among secondary school students, particularly among girls. These findings may suggest that the data are amenable to statistical analysis and that there are interesting relationships between school WASH and education to study further at the global level, as well as potential synergies to harness across goals for advancing sustainable development more effectively. However, given their current incompleteness, the data are unable to support rigorous statistical analyses that can supply high-quality evidence. Based on our study, we offer several recommendations to enhance data utility and guide future analyses.

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Fig. 1: LMICs included in the analyses.
Fig. 2: Primary school toilet conditions across female and male enrolment.
Fig. 3: Primary school water conditions across female and male enrolment.
Fig. 4: Secondary school toilet conditions across female and male enrolment.
Fig. 5: Secondary school water conditions across female and male enrolment.

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Data availability

The enrolment data are open and may be readily accessed and downloaded (for all countries in one file for each combination of educational stage and sex) at https://data.worldbank.org/ by searching separately for ‘net enrolment’ for boys and girls at the primary and secondary school levels. Similarly, the data for each covariate may be accessed and downloaded (for all countries in one file for each covariate) at https://data.worldbank.org through the search bar. The JMP data are also publicly available and may be accessed and downloaded as individual country files at https://washdata.org/monitoring/schools/country-files-2018. The WASH data used in this analysis were not drawn from the website but were given by the JMP to the authors as a Stata file; the data were subsequently extracted as an Excel file to be used in R. The authors were required to sign a memorandum of understanding which stated that datasets shared by the JMP for specific purposes could not be disclosed to a third party without prior permission from the JMP. We therefore recommend interested parties submit their requests to the JMP at info@washdata.org.

Code availability

As the analysis was structured around the Stata file version of the JMP dataset, and given the restricted nature of this compiled version, the authors will provide the code only on reasonable request once the requisite permission for the compiled data is obtained from the JMP. All figures were created using the raw JMP and World Bank data and R packages ggplot266 (with Natural Earth public domain data from the maps package for Fig. 1 (ref. 67) and egg68.

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Acknowledgements

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under Grant No. DGE-1762114 (received by L.C.H.). Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. We are also thankful for the support of the ARCS Foundation (L.C.H.). The National Science Foundation and ARCS Foundation were not involved in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication. The authors gratefully acknowledge the work of the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene and all the in-country agencies that helped compile the school WASH database. Similarly, we appreciate the World Bank and their partnering in-country agencies for free and open access to global enrolment data. We are indebted to the wonderful consultants of the Centre for Social Science Computation and Research, and the Centre for Statistics and the Social Sciences at the University of Washington. Many thanks to J. Herting for sharing his statistical expertise and S. Chakrabarti for helping to frame the article. Thank you to J. Carlson for assistance with data compilation. Any errors are the sole responsibility of the authors.

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  1. Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Leigh C. Hamlet & Jessica Kaminsky

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L.C.H. and J.K. conceptualized the idea. L.C.H. curated the data and performed the formal analysis. L.C.H. acquired funding and was responsible for the methodology. L.C.H. and J.K were responsible for the resources. J.K. supervised the project. L.C.H. and J.K. wrote the original draft and were also responsible for the review and editing of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Leigh C. Hamlet or Jessica Kaminsky.

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Hamlet, L.C., Kaminsky, J. Analytical utility of the JMP school water, sanitation and hygiene global monitoring data. Nat Sustain 6, 222–232 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-01005-4

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