Table 1.

Variables of interest.

Category	Variable (parallel concept in Njau et al. [7])	Variable description
Outcome variable	Childhood malaria infection	Detection of HRP2 antigen in the blood of the child by RDT
Independent variable	Primary variable in putative causal pathway:
	Level of maternal education	Highest level of formal education completed by the mother of the child. The level of maternal education was divided into three categories: (1) no formal education; (2) only primary school; (3) any education beyond primary school
	Intermediate variables in putative causal pathways:
	Uptake of malaria prevention and treatment strategies (child health knowledge) Assessed by two proxy variables:	(1) Reported bednet (a) ownership and (b) use, defined as the child sleeping under a bednet the night before the survey (2) Access to quality medical care if the child had a febrile illness in the past month, which was determined by asking the mother if (a) there was a diagnosis by a health care provider, (b) a blood test was performed and (c) treatment was administered
	Household wealth (economic empowerment)	A linear ‘asset index’ modified from [23], based on 6 household characteristics or assets. Principal component analysis was used to derive the weights for the index, which was used to divide households into wealth quintiles [23]
	Family formation pattern	Assessed by two proxy variables: (1) Household size, defined as the total number of people living in the house (2) Total number of children less than 5 years old per household
	Social networking	The proxy variable used to assess a mother’s social network was mobile phone ownership
	HIV serostatus	Detection of the presence or absence of HIV antibodies in the blood of the child by RDT
Covariates	Age	Due to the known age dependence of malaria prevalence, it was important to adjust for age in our analyses
	Study site	Study was done at one of three sites (Butembo, Beni and Goma)