How It Was and How It Should Be: Moving Toward a Better Measurement of Contraceptive Prevalence Among Unmarried Women

Contraceptive prevalence among unmarried women—calculated from the response to a version of the question—“Are you or your partner currently doing something or using any method to delay or avoid getting pregnant?” is most accurately measured among those who report sexual recency within the previous four weeks. This approach, long adopted by The Demographic and Health Surveys Program (DHS), has recently been adopted by groups such as FP2030 and Track20. Since this shift toward increased standardization, the DHS Program has included in its core questionnaire questions to better capture contraceptive use at last sex. We use these new DHS data from seven countries to explore whether a composite contraceptive use measure (i.e., current contraceptive use + contraceptive use at last sex) provides a more meaningful assessment of contraceptive use among unmarried women. Based on our findings, we recommend that the family planning field adopt the composite contraceptive use measure as its standard approach for measuring contraceptive prevalence among unmarried women. Our findings provide a guide for more accurately measuring, reporting, and most importantly, understanding the contraceptive practices of unmarried women.