Temesgen, Shibru(PhD)Adelo, Belete2018-06-252023-11-092018-06-252023-11-092014-06http://10.90.10.223:4000/handle/123456789/3079Malnutrition is one of the most important causes for improper physical and mental development of children. This study is an attempt to identify factors affecting the severity status of children malnutrition in Ethiopia by using malnutrition severity models for under age five Ethiopian children. Malnutrition severity is categorized into three levels in order of increasing of severity. The parallel-lines assumption of commonly applied proportional odds model is usually too restricting. This assumption may be violated only by one or a few of the included variables. A partial proportional odds model where the parallel-lines constraint is relaxed only for those variables when it is not justified is applied in this study. Partial proportional odds models were used for the severity status of children malnutrition in Ethiopia using 2011 EDHS data. The partial proportional odds models perform consistently better than the other two models (POM and BLR). By using partial proportional odds models, the interpretation of the parameters allows better insight concerning contributing factors, i.e., it revealed the increasing malnutrition severity due to age categories of children and incidence of diarrhea in the last two weeks before the survey. The significant factors affecting the severity of children malnutrition cover demographic, socioeconomic, and health related factors: age of child, sex of child, birth order, education of mother and father, wealth status of household, place of residence, mother’s nutritional status, incidence of diarrhea and fever. Mother’s education level has been identified as the most significant factor influencing children malnutrition. Thus, based on these findings more efficient countermeasures can be developed to mitigate children malnutrition severity. Furthermore, the influence of these factors can be used in the development of strategies of intervention for reducing severity of child malnutritionenStatus of Children in EthiopiaThesis