Trial reportPloS one2020
Exploring young women's reproductive decision-making, agency and social norms in South African informal settlements.
Trial report in PloS one, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 49 citations in OpenAlex.
- Evaluating the effects of a multi-level intervention on young women's contraceptive use: sexual and reproductive health results of a cluster-randomised factorial-design study in Tshwane, South Africa.Sexual and reproductive health matters · 2025Trial
- Violence against women and sexual reproductive health service use among Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia: a latent class analysis.Reproductive health · 2025Article
- Multi-level analysis of pregnancy termination among sexually active married women in developing countries.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The State of Person-Centered Measurement for Family Planning Need and Use: A Scoping Review.Studies in family planning · 2025Article
- "Injectable ARVs will give me peace" women's acceptability of injectable antiretroviral therapy in prevention of HIV vertical transmission in Uganda.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Socio-structural influences on unintended pregnancy among girls aged 15-17 years in Papua New Guinea.BMJ global health · 2025Article
- Contraceptive decision-making and its association with contraceptive use among married adolescent girls in Niger.Reproductive health · 2025Article
- A qualitative exploration of the reasons and influencing factors for pregnancy termination among young women in Soweto, South Africa: a Socio-ecological perspective.Reproductive health · 2024Article
- Fertility preservation and protection: young women's decision-making about contraceptive use in Zimbabwe.Culture, health & sexuality · 2024Article
- Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Validation of the Sexual and Reproductive Empowerment Scale for Adolescents and Young Adults in Kenya.Studies in family planning · 2024Article
- Determinants and Patterns of Contraceptive Use among Sexually Active Women Living with HIV in Ibadan, Nigeria.Research square · 2024Article
- Exploring perceptions of gender roles amongst sexually active adolescents in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.PloS one · 2024Article
- Prevalence and factors associated with early childbearing in sub-saharan Africa: evidence from demographic and health surveys of 31 countries.BMC women's health · 2023Article
- Sexual and reproductive health needs and practices of female sex workers in Papua New Guinea: findings from a biobehavioral survey Kauntim mi tu ('Count me too').Archives of public health = Archives belges de sante publique · 2022Article
- Applying a gender lens to social norms, couple communication and decision making to increase modern contraceptive use in Ethiopia, a mixed methods study.Reproductive health · 2022Article
- Refugees' Agency: On Resistance, Resilience, and Resources.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Social contexts of fertility desire among non-childbearing young men and women aged 15-24 years in Nigeria.Reproductive health · 2021Article
- Whose bodies are they? Conceptualizing reproductive violence against adolescents in Ethiopia, Malawi and Zambia.Agenda (Durban, South Africa) · 2021Article
- "I did not plan … that is what hurts": Pregnancy intentions and contraceptive use among pregnant young women in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.African journal of AIDS research : AJAR · 2021Article
- Need for and use of contraception by women before and during COVID-19 in four sub-Saharan African geographies: results from population-based national or regional cohort surveys.The Lancet. Global health · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This paper explores reproductive decision-making among young women in South Africa's informal settlements and considers whether and how agency and social norm theory inform their decisions. Understanding whether, when and how young women make decisions about conception and motherhood is critical for supporting women to avoid unplanned, early motherhood. Qualitative data were collected from 15 young women in informal settlements in eThekwini, South Africa at three time points over 18 months, using in-depth interviews, participant observation and photovoice, and were analysed inductively. When the young women were teenagers and into their early twenties, and had not yet had a child, most paid little attention to whether or not they conceived. This shifted as they grew older and/or after having a first child, at which point many of the women began to express, and sometimes act upon, a greater desire to control whether and when they conceived and delay further pregnancies. At different times in their lives, both social norms and reproductive agency, specifically 'distributed agency' played significant roles in influencing their reproductive decision-making. Social norms held the most influence when they were teenagers and experiencing normative pressures to have a baby while young. As they grew older and/or had a first child they began to assert some agentic control around their reproduction. We therefore recommend that in order to improve the effectiveness of services and interventions supporting young women to delay unplanned pregnancies, programmers, researchers and policy makers must develop a better understanding of the role of social norms and agency at different stages of women's lives.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.