Key indicators for family planning projects

This paper lists numerous indicators that could be used to monitor and evaluate family planning and suggests ten potentially useful for most projects. These ten cover all aspects of a family planning program: program inputs, behavioral outcomes among clients, and long-term demographic outcomes. For a specific project, these ten (or any selection made from the indicators here) need to be supplemented with indicators for other reproductive health services, which will be covered in a subsequent note. As input indicators, the paper suggests (1) popular approval of family planning, a survey-based measure that should be collected from both men and women to indicate the acceptability of contraception, and (2) the female secondary enrolment ratio, perhaps the chief socioeconomic determinant of demand for contraception. To represent program capacity and process, two indicators are proposed : (3) a management information score, as a strategic measure of the organization's institutional capital, and (4) couple-years of protection provided per worker, as a measure of program efficiency. Program outputs are mainly access to services and their quality, represented respectively by (5) proximity of services, or the proportion of married women of reproductive age with services within their rural village or urban neighbourhood or no more than one kilometre away, and (6) the dropout ratio, a measure of method discontinuation that should be sensitive to the type of services clients receive...