Table 2 Description and measurement of independent variables

 Age Group

The current age of the women and re-coded into two categories with values of “0” for 15–19, “1” for 20–24.

 Wealth Index

The datasets contained a wealth index that was created using principal components analysis coded as “poorest”, “poorer”, “Middle”, “Richer”, and “Richest in the EDHS data set.” For this study we recoded it in to three categories as “poor” (includes the poorest and the poorer categories), “middle”, and “rich” (includes the richer and the richest categories)

 Working status

Re-coded in two categories with a value of “0” for not working, and “1” for working.

 Visit health facility

Recoded into two categories with a value of “0” for those who visited the health facility in the last 12 months and “1” for those who did not visit the health facility in the past 12 months.

 Media exposure

A composite variable obtained by combining whether a respondent reads newspaper/magazine, listen to the radio, and watch television with a value of “0” if a woman were not exposed to at least one of the three media, and “1” if a woman has access/exposure to at least one of the three media.

 Educational status

This is the minimum educational level a woman achieved and re-coded into three groups with a value of “0” for no education, “1” for primary education, and “2” for secondary education and “3” for tertiary and above educational level as higher education.

 Marital status

This was the current marital status of women and recoded in two categories with a value of “0” for unmarried (includes those who were never in union, divorced, widowed, and separated), and “1” for “married” (includes those living with a partner and those who are married)

 Age at sex

The variable age at sex is coded as “0” for those who have first sex before 20 years and “1” for those who initiate sex at 20 and above years.

 Risky sexual behavior

By using a different question from the DHS survey it was coded into three categories “0” for no risky sexual behavior, “1” for some risky sexual behavior and “2” for those with higher risk sexual behavior.

 HIV knowledge

It was generated from different HIV-related questions from the DHS guide and coded as “0” for those with low knowledge about HIV, “1” for those with high knowledge about HIV/AIDS and “2” for those having comprehensive HIV knowledge.

 Stigma indicator

The variable sigma indicator was generated from individual DHS survey questions about an attitude towards HIV and coded as “0” for no stigmatized attitude, “1” for low stigma attitude, “2” for moderate stigma attitude and “3” for those with high stigmatized attitude towards HIV/AIDS.

 Number of sexual partner

The variable number of sexual partner coded “0” for those with one sexual partner and “1” for having more than one sexual partner.

 Community of poverty level

Measured by proportion of households in the poor (combination of poorer and poorest) wealth quintile derived from data on wealth index. Then it was categorized based on national median value as: low (communities in which <50 % of women had poor socioeconomic status) and high (communities in which ≥50% of women had poor socioeconomic status) poverty level.

 Type of place of residence

The variable place of residence recorded as rural and urban in the dataset was used without change.