ArticleThe American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene2017
Is Using a Latrine "A Strange Thing To Do"? A Mixed-Methods Study of Sanitation Preference and Behaviors in Rural Ethiopia.
Article in The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 30 citations in OpenAlex.
- Household-level sanitation in Ethiopia and its influencing factors: a systematic review.BMC public health · 2022Pooled it
- Effect of water, sanitation, and hygiene on childhood growth in Ethiopia: a cluster-randomized trial.International journal of hygiene and environmental health · 2026Trial
- Changing hygiene behaviours: a cluster-randomized trial, Ethiopia.Bulletin of the World Health Organization · 2021Trial
- Odour reduction interventions for simple pit latrines in rural Ethiopia: a randomized study.Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene · 2020Trial
- Effects of Community Health Improvement Process on Sanitary Latrine Usage in a Rural Village of Villupuram District, Tamil Nadu.Indian journal of community medicine : official publication of Indian Association of Preventive & Social Medicine · 2025Article
- Article
- Determinants of Latrine Use Behavior: The Psychosocial Proxies of Individual-Level Defecation Practices in Rural Coastal Ecuador.The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene · 2019Article
- Latent variable modeling to develop a robust proxy for sensitive behaviors: application to latrine use behavior and its association with sanitation access in a middle-income country.BMC public health · 2019Article
- Viral species richness and composition in young children with loose or watery stool in Ethiopia.BMC infectious diseases · 2019Article
- Article
- A Spatio-Temporal Pattern and Socio-Economic Factors Analysis of Improved Sanitation in China, 2006⁻2015.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2018Article
- Defining Diarrhea: A Population-Based Validation Study of Caregiver-Reported Stool Consistency in the Amhara Region of Ethiopia.The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene · 2018Article
- Enabling Factors for Sustaining Open Defecation-Free Communities in Rural Indonesia: A Cross-Sectional Study.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2017Article
- A socio-ecological analysis of barriers to the adoption, sustainablity and consistent use of sanitation facilities in rural Ethiopia.BMC public health · 2017Article
- Epidemiology of Soil-Transmitted Helminth and Intestinal Protozoan Infections in Preschool-Aged Children in the Amhara Region of Ethiopia.The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
15 authors at 6 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Latrines are the most basic form of improved sanitation and are a common public health intervention. Understanding motivations for building and using latrines can help develop effective, sustainable latrine promotion programs. We conducted a mixed-methods study of latrine use in the Amhara region of Ethiopia. We held 15 focus group discussions and surveyed 278 households in five communities. We used the Integrated Behavioral Model for Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene interventions to guide our qualitative analysis. Seventy-one percent of households had a latrine, but coverage varied greatly across communities. Higher household income was not associated with latrine use (odds ratio [OR] = 1.9; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.5, 7.7); similarly, cost and availability of materials were not discussed as barriers to latrine use in the focus groups. Male-headed households were more likely to use latrines than households with female heads (OR = 3.5; 95% CI = 1.6, 7.7), and households with children in school were more likely to use latrines than households without children in school (OR = 2.3; 95% CI = 1.6, 3.3). These quantitative findings were confirmed in focus groups, where participants discussed how children relay health messages from school. Participants discussed how women prefer not to use latrines, often finding them strange or even scary. These findings are useful for public health implementation; they imply that community-level drivers are important predictors of household latrine use and that cost is not a significant barrier. These findings confirm that school-aged children may be effective conduits of health messages and suggest that latrines can be better marketed and designed for women.
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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.