ArticleStudies in family planning2022
Measurement of Unmet Need for Contraception: A Counterfactual Approach.
Article in Studies in family planning, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- Contraceptive Alignment: A Descriptive Study of Concordance between Preferred and Actual Contraceptive Method Use.Studies in family planning · 2026Article
- High unmet need for modern contraception among married women of reproductive age (15-49 years) in Mogadishu, Somalia: a community-based cross-sectional study.BMJ public health · 2026Article
- [Unmet need for contraception in the racialized population in Colombia: analysis of the results of the 2015 National Demographic and Health Survey].Cadernos de saude publica · 2026Article
- Contraceptive Concordance.Studies in family planning · 2025Article
- The State of Person-Centered Measurement for Family Planning Need and Use: A Scoping Review.Studies in family planning · 2025Article
- Measuring Unmet Need for Contraception Using a Person-Centered Algorithm: An Application With a Community-Based Sample of Married Rohingya Women in Bangladesh.Studies in family planning · 2025Article
- Domestic violence laws and women's unmet need for family planning: Quasi-experimental evidence from Africa.Reproductive health · 2025Article
- Unmet family planning needs in Malaysia: prevalence, associated factors, and implications for targeted interventions.Contraception and reproductive medicine · 2025Article
- Proposed changes to framework to assess contraceptive autonomy based on phased in-depth interviews in northwest Tanzania.Reproductive health · 2025Article
- Assessing Trends in the Desire to Avoid Pregnancy: A Cautionary Note.Studies in family planning · 2024Article
- Spatial distribution and determinants of unmet need for family planning among all reproductive‑age women in Uganda: a multi‑level logistic regression modeling approach and spatial analysis.Contraception and reproductive medicine · 2024Article
- Unmet need and intention to use as predictors of adoption of contraception in 10 Performance Monitoring for Action geographies.SSM - population health · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
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Abstract
Unmet need plays a critical role in reproductive health research, evaluation, and advocacy. Although conceptually straightforward, its estimation suffers from a number of methodological limitations, most notably its reliance on biased measures of women's stated fertility preferences. We propose a counterfactual-based approach to measuring unmet need at the population level. Using data from 56 countries, we calculate unmet need in a population as the difference between: (1) the observed contraceptive prevalence in the population; and (2) the calculated contraceptive prevalence in a subsample of women who are identified to be from "ideal" family planning environments. Women from "ideal" environments are selected on characteristics that signal their contraceptive autonomy and decision-making over family planning. We find significant differences between our approach and existing methods to calculating unmet need, and we observe variation across countries when comparing indicators. We argue that our indicator of unmet need is preferable to existing population-level indicators due to its independence from biases that are generated from the use of reported preference measures, the simplicity with which it can be derived, and its relevance for cross-country comparisons as well as context-specific analyses.
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