Table 1. The description of some of the independent variables.

Variables	Definitions/Categories
Age of the mothers (in years)	The age of the mother was coded as 15–19, 20–24, 25–29, 30–34, 35–39, 40–44, and 45–49; however, during data cleaning some of the categories lack or have very limited participants, thus, we regrouped into 15–19, 20–29, 30–39, and 40–49
Religion	Religion was coded as Protestant, Orthodox, Muslim, Catholic, traditional, other. Depending on the number of participants, we sum up Catholic, and Traditional, as “Others”. And, we regrouped into Protestant, Orthodox, Muslim, and others
Marital status	Marital status was coded as married, never in the union, living with partner, widowed, divorced, and no longer living together/separated; but, participants from the last five were very few, so, we categorized married and unmarried by living married alone and classified all else.
Birth order	Birth order was a count number ranging from 1 to 15; however, we regrouped into 1st, 2nd, and third and above
Parity	The total number of children ever born was a count number ranging from 1 to 15; however, we regrouped into 1st, and 2nd and above
Preceding birth interval	Preceding birth interval was coded from 1 to 219 months in the dataset; however, during data cleaning some of the categories lack or have very limited participants, thus, we regrouped into < 24, 24–36, and >36 months.
Number of a household member	The number of household size was a count number ranging from 1 to 24; however, during data cleaning some of the categories lacked or have very limited participants, so, we recoded into ≤ 4 and ≥ 5.
Contraception	EMDHS grouped the variable No-method, Traditional method, Modern method