SynthesisInternational journal of environmental research and public health2016
How Do Households Respond to Unreliable Water Supplies? A Systematic Review.
Synthesis in International journal of environmental research and public health, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed.
- Socioecological drivers of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) choices: A qualitative analysis of maternal perspectives in northwest Ecuador.PLOS water · 2026Article
- Environmental exposures associated with the gut microbiome and resistome of pregnant women and children in Northwest Ecuador.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Article
- Spatial distribution and determinants of unimproved sources of drinking water among Somali households: spatial and multilevel analysis using nationwide survey data.Journal of water and health · 2025Article
- Environmental Exposures and the Human Gut Resistome in Northwest Ecuador.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- A multilevel analysis of basic water availability in Ethiopia using 2016 demographic health survey.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- How water intermittency and water perceptions influence household coping strategies in northwestern Ecuador.PLOS water · 2025Article
- Coping strategies for household water insecurity in rural Gambia, mediating factors in the relationship between weather, water and health.BMC public health · 2024Article
- Article
- Toward a more systematic understanding of water insecurity coping strategies: insights from 11 global sites.BMJ global health · 2024Article
- Access to drinking safe water and its associated factors among households in East Africa: a mixed effect analysis using 12 East African countries recent national health survey.Journal of health, population, and nutrition · 2024Article
- Unimproved source of drinking water and its associated factors: a spatial and multilevel analysis of Ethiopian demographic and health survey.BMC public health · 2023Article
- Water Insecurity, Water Borrowing, and Psychosocial Stress Among Daasanach Pastoralists in Northern Kenya.Water international · 2023Article
- Cross-sectional study to measure household water insecurity and its health outcomes in urban Mexico.BMJ open · 2021Article
- A mixed methods study to evaluate participatory mapping for rural water safety planning in western Kenya.PloS one · 2021Article
- Seasonality of drinking water sources and the impact of drinking water source on enteric infections among children in Limpopo, South Africa.International journal of hygiene and environmental health · 2021Article
- In pursuit of 'safe' water: the burden of personal injury from water fetching in 21 low-income and middle-income countries.BMJ global health · 2020Article
- Water borrowing is consistently practiced globally and is associated with water-related system failures across diverse environments.Global environmental change : human and policy dimensions · 2020Article
- Household coping strategies associated with unreliable water supplies and diarrhea in Ecuador, an upper-middle-income country.Water research · 2020Article
- An Assessment of Inter-Observer Agreement in Water Source Classification and Sanitary Risk Observations.Exposure and health · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Although the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target for drinking water was met, in many developing countries water supplies are unreliable. This paper reviews how households in developing countries cope with unreliable water supplies, including coping costs, the distribution of coping costs across socio-economic groups, and effectiveness of coping strategies in meeting household water needs. Structured searches were conducted in peer-reviewed and grey literature in electronic databases and search engines, and 28 studies were selected for review, out of 1643 potentially relevant references. Studies were included if they reported on strategies to cope with unreliable household water supplies and were based on empirical research in developing countries. Common coping strategies include drilling wells, storing water, and collecting water from alternative sources. The choice of coping strategies is influenced by income, level of education, land tenure and extent of unreliability. The findings of this review highlight that low-income households bear a disproportionate coping burden, as they often engage in coping strategies such as collecting water from alternative sources, which is labour and time-intensive, and yields smaller quantities of water. Such alternative sources may be of lower water quality, and pose health risks. In the absence of dramatic improvements in the reliability of water supplies, a point of critical avenue of enquiry should be what coping strategies are effective and can be readily adopted by low income households.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.