RESEARCH ARTICLE Why Do Women Deliver at Home? Multilevel Modeling of Ethiopian National Demographic and Health Survey Data

Background Despite of the existing intensive efforts to improve maternal health in Ethiopia, the propor-tion of birth delivered at home remains high and is still the top priority among the national health threats. Objective The study aimed to examine effects of individual women and community-level factors of women’s decision on place of delivery in Ethiopia. Methods Data were obtained from the nationally representative 2011 Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey (EDHS) which used a two-stage cluster sampling design with rural-urban and regions as strata. The EDHS collected data from a big sample size but our study fo-cused on a sample of 7,908 women whose most recent birth was within five years preceding 2011 and 576 communities in which the women were living in. The data were analyzed using a two-level mixed-effects logistic regression to determine fixed-effects of individual