The Bangladesh Verbal Autopsy Study 1997 examined causes of death for 678 children under 5 years of age. Data were collected through a follow-up survey on deaths that were identified in the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey 1996-1997. A team of interviewers collected information about the deceased child through an interview with the primary caregiver: the child's sex, month and year of birth, age at death, and household geographical identifiers such as village and head of household. The verbal autopsy instrument was designed for use by lay interviewers for retrospectively reported deaths and for algorithm-based computerized identification of cause of death. The same verbal autopsy instrument and methods to collect the data and the same computer algorithm to assign causes of death were used in both the 1995 and 1997 verbal autopsy follow-up surveys.