Onchocerciasis community survey, Bo District, Sierra Leone: a de-identified dataset of 1,500 adults across five endemic chiefdoms (knowledge, causal beliefs, treatment-seeking, socio-economic and psychological impact, and coping)

This dataset contains the de-identified quantitative survey data underlying a series of explanatory sequential mixed-methods studies of onchocerciasis (river blindness) in Bo District, Southern Province, Sierra Leone. A cross-sectional household survey of 1,500 adults aged 18 years and older was conducted across twenty-six rural villages in five endemic chiefdoms (Bagbwe, Baoma, Gbo, Selenga and Tikonko), selected with the Bo District Health Management Team on the basis of documented endemicity, mass drug administration (MDA) history and ecological diversity. Respondents were selected using a four-stage cluster design (chiefdoms purposively; villages by stratification; households systematically; one adult per household by the Kish grid). The Excel workbook contains three sheets. "Data" holds 1,500 records across 128 variables covering socio-demographic and asset characteristics; biomedical knowledge and causal beliefs (including transmission views and supernatural/traditional attributions); symptom recognition; healthcare-seeking and traditional-remedy use; risk and preventive behaviours; socio-economic and psychological impact; and individual, community and economic coping. "Codebook" documents every variable with its questionnaire number, label, survey section and data type. "Chiefdom_Summary" gives the sample distribution by chiefdom. Data were collected on tablets using Open Data Kit (ODK) Collect with instruments translated into Mende and piloted prior to fieldwork. All direct identifiers have been removed: respondents are identified only by sequential codes, age is recorded in five-year brackets, and the finest geographic unit reported is the chiefdom. Ethical approval was granted by the Njala University Postgraduate Review Board, with additional permissions from the Bo District Health Management Team and the relevant chiefdom authorities; all participants provided informed consent. The qualitative data (key informant interviews and focus group discussions) are not included here because they contain potentially identifying information from small communities. These data underlie manuscripts currently under peer review; the article DOI(s) will be linked to this record upon publication. Researchers reusing the data are asked to cite this dataset.