Predictors for the duration of breastfeeding among ethiopia women of childbearing age with babies; application of accelerate failure time and parametric shared frailty models

Abstract Introduction Duration of breastfeeding is the length of the time that infants who were initially breastfed continue to receive breast milk until weaning. The duration of breastfeeding is important for a child's health, growth, and development. However, the duration of breastfeeding decreases from time to time and further leads children to be exposed to malnutrition (stunting, wasting, and weight loss). Children who did not get enough breastfeeding are also exposed to different diseases. Previous studies used a simple survival model and didn’t see the shared frailty model on the variable of interest. Therefore, the current study aimed to investigate the factors affecting the duration of breastfeeding among Ethiopian women of reproductive age with babies. Methods A cross-sectional study design was conducted on 15,400 women of childbearing age with babies in nine regional states and two city administrations. The data source for the analysis was the 2016 EDHS data. The Cox-proportional hazard model, AFT, and parametric shared frailty models were conducted for the current investigation. Weibull-gamma shared frailty model was in favor of others for current data analysis. Results Among the covariates, women living in urban area (Φ = 0.96; 95% CI; (0.94,0.97); p-value = 0.001), non-educated women(Φ = 1.03; 95% CI; (1.00,1.06); p-value = 0.039), primary educated women (Φ = 1.13; 95% CI; (1.11,1.15); p-value 3 years(Φ = 1.28; 95% CI; (1.06, 1.43); p-value