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The KAP-gap and the Unmet Need for Contraception

出版	Population Council, 1991
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=Ya6RAAAAIAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋This paper discusses the issues involved in the measurement of unmet need for contraception (the "KAP-gap") and provides a new measuring model that removes the shortcomings of existing approaches. The paper reviews the existing measures of the KAP-gap, which generally define unmet need as the proportion of married women who want no more children but are not using contraception, and points out flaws in these approaches. The main shortcomings of the basic approaches include the exclusion of the following 2 groups: 1. Women who wish to stop childbearing but who may have good reasons for not practicing contraception at the time of the survey, such as the fact that they may be infecund or pregnant at the time; and 2. Women who wish to postpone childbearing but who are not implementing this spacing preference because they are not practicing contraception. By addressing these 2 shortcomings, the author's new methodology provides a more accurate picture of unmet need. The author uses data from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) conducted in 15 developing nations during the 1980s to show the difference between the conventional approaches and the alternative method. Previous studies of the KAP-gap have differed widely in their assessment of the size and implications of the phenomenon; some have even claimed that no unmet need exists. The new method, however, reveals an average total unmet need of 17% among the currently married women of the populations studies. Noting that the rest of the developing world probably has a roughly equal KAP-gap, the author concludes that the total number of couples or unmarried individuals in the Third World with unmet need for contraception is about 100 million.