Many of the key projects within the SPE program use data from the Chitwan Valley Family Study (CVFS).
The CVFS is a comprehensive family panel study of individuals, households, and communities in the Chitwan Valley of Nepal. The study was initially designed to investigate the influence of changing community and household contexts on population outcomes such as marital and childbearing processes. Over time the goals of the study expanded to investigate family dynamics, intergenerational influences, child health, migration, labor force participation, attitudes and beliefs, mental health, agricultural production, environmental change, and many other topics. The data include full life histories for more than 10,000 individuals, tracking and interviews with all migrants, continuous measurement of community change, over 20 years of demographic event registry, and many other data collections.
The CVFS website provides information about the study. Past, ongoing, and future CVFS data collections are listed here. Documentation including codebooks, questionnaires, and instruments can be downloaded from the Individual-level, Household-level, and Community-level data pages. Data access instructions and data user guides are also provided.