The 1994 Indonesia Demographic and Health Survey (IDHS) is a follow-on project to the 1987 National Indonesia Contraceptive Prevalence Survey (NICPS) and to the 1991 IDHS. The 1994 IDHS was significantly expanded from prior surveys to include two new modules in the women's questionnaire, namely maternal mortality and awareness of AIDS. The survey also investigated the availability of family planning and health services, which provides an opportunity for linking women's fertility, family planning and child health care with the availability of services. The 1994 IDHS also included a household expenditure module, which provides a means of identifying the household's economic status.
The 1994 IDHS was specifically designed to meet the following objectives:
- Provide data concerning fertility, family planning, maternal and child health, maternal mortality and awareness of AIDS that can be used by program managers, policymakers, and researchers to evaluate and improve existing programs;
- Provide data about availability of family planning and health services, thereby offering an opportunity for linking women's fertility, family planning and child-care behavior with the availability of services;
- Provide data on household expenditures, which can be used to identify the household's economic status;
- Provide data that can be used to analyze trends over time by examining many of the same fertility, mortality and health issues that were addressed in the earlier surveys (1987 NICPS and 1991 IDHS);
- Measure changes in fertility and contraceptive prevalence rates and at the same time study factors that affect the changes, such as marriage patterns, urban/rural residence, education, breastfeeding habits, and the availability of contraception;
- Measure the development and achievements of programs related to health policy, particularly those concerning the maternal and child health development program implemented through public health clinics in Indonesia.