The Colombia Demographic and Health Survey 1986 includes both the third round of Colombia's National Contraceptive Prevalence Survey and phase 1 of the DHS series, a comprehensive and nationally representative household survey which covers population, education, health, nutrition, family planning and household characteristics.

For this round of the survey, anthropomorphic measurements were taken of children between 3 and 36 months old.

A community module collected data from 181 health facilities located near the community, including those offering family planning services, and the general number of physicians and nurses working at the facilites.

5,329 women from 4,273 households were surveyed. The sample excluded the Department of Caquetá and the geographic areas outside of the continental territory of Colombia. These excluded areas represented less than 3 percent of the national population. The sample design allowed for estimations at the region level.