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4 Ways of Addressing Current Data Limitations
Pages 31-40

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From page 31...
... Promising measures that need strengthening include those relating to social norms and qual ity of care in family planning. Critical gaps in measurement persist for agency in fertility, contraceptive discontinuation, ambivalence/not planning, forms of resistance (e.g., covert use)
From page 32...
... During June and July of 2020, a phone survey was conducted on the topic of COVID-19 in four countries for which baseline data had already been collected: Burkina Faso, DRC, Kenya, and Nigeria. This phone survey measured COVID-19 awareness, media exposure, risk perception, knowledge, behavior change, and socioeconomic impact, as well as the disease's impact on family planning, contraceptive use, and fertility intentions.
From page 33...
... " Multinomial logistic regression was performed to analyze characteristics associated with changes in decision-making roles, with a focus on women who made decisions at baseline and assessing the degree of change in that role; characteristics included in the analysis were modern contraceptive use, parity, age, education, household size, wealth tertile, job participation in the previous seven days, and household economic impact of COVID-19. The analysis revealed that the percentage of households in which women were the decision-makers shrank from baseline to follow-up across the samples, while partner or external decision-making rose.
From page 34...
... To this point, Anglewicz responded that in most cases the surveys were conducted by the same interviewer at baseline and at follow-up to establish a rapport between the questioner and the respondent and to yield better quality data despite the change in survey mode. Furthermore, the influence of using phones as a survey mode was specifically assessed in other data collected in Burkina Faso, and results suggested that the use of phone surveys did not have a large impact on responses of interest to PMA.
From page 35...
... In addition, data on economic impact intensity and fear of COVID-19 infection can be used to assess overall COVID-19 impact, and PMA plans to analyze variation in changes over time for associations with COVID-19 impact. Jocelyn Finlay suggested that the intersection of domestic violence outcomes and decision-making would be an interesting dimension to add to this study.
From page 36...
... To this end, Raj cautioned that researchers must be cognizant of the fact that family planning has roots in population control and eugenics, lest the field slip backwards into this dangerous territory by being overly prescriptive regarding what people's choices "should" be. The project identified several measures of agency that perform well in family planning research, including measures related to contraceptive self-efficacy, sexual communication self-efficacy, and reproductive decision-making autonomy.
From page 37...
... Raj replied that this question arose during the September conference of the EMERGE Family Planning Project and that experts in the field support retiring use of the term "family planning." However, Raj noted that it is challenging to change widely understood terminology, and she reiterated her desire to, at a minimum, see an end to the use of the term as synonymous with contraceptive use.
From page 38...
... DHS household surveys include five questionnaires: household, woman, man, biomarkers, and fieldworker. Kishor remarked that the DHS questionnaire for men is largely a subset of the woman's questionnaire; while both questionnaires collect information on topics including number of children, contraception, fertility preferences, and gender and women's empowerment, the woman's questionnaire includes additional questions questions related to birth (and now pregnancy)
From page 39...
... Although the DHS Program uses country-specific indicators to account for cultural differences, the data collection needs to be more sensitive to a woman's age and marital status through the use of separate questions and methods; Kishor pointed to the fact that many DHS variables are currently applicable only to married women. Kishor said that the DHS Program needs to collect more qualitative data to complement quantitative variables.
From page 40...
... Finlay also asked whether longitudinal data can be enabled through more frequent data collection by phone or tablet. Kishor acknowledged that one lesson people are learning during the COVID-19 pandemic is how to conduct more business remotely, and that the DHS Program could look at survey approaches similar to the PMA study presented by Philip Anglewicz, in which after an in-person interview has been conducted follow-ups may be pursued by phone or with other technologies.


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