New Measures for Family Planning and Exposure to Risk of Pregnancy Based on Sexual Activity and Contraceptive Use Data.

Chi Hyun Lee, Herbert Susmann, Leontine Alkema

Studies in family planning 2023 Mar

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Family planning measures for unmarried women are based on contraceptive demand and use among sexually active women. Sexual activity status is commonly defined based on comparing reported time-since-last-sex to a cutoff time, with women defined to be sexually active if their most recent sex was within the last four weeks. While easy to understand and compute, this approach to constructing family planning measures results in a limited understanding of family planning and exposure to unintended pregnancy because it cannot comprehensively capture the frequency of sex at the population level. We propose a new statistical approach to quantify sexual activity, using reported time-since-last-sex data. Based on estimated frequencies of sex among users and nonusers in need of family planning, we propose new family planning measures, including the ratio of protected exposure over all women's exposure to risk of unintended pregnancy. © 2023 The Authors. Studies in Family Planning published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Population Council.

Citation

Chi Hyun Lee, Herbert Susmann, Leontine Alkema. New Measures for Family Planning and Exposure to Risk of Pregnancy Based on Sexual Activity and Contraceptive Use Data. Studies in family planning. 2023 Mar;54(1):145-160