Description

UNMETNEED is a constructed variable that reports a woman's need for family planning according to her fertility preferences, current use of family planning methods, and risk factors for pregnancy. The variable UNMETYN is a yes/no binary recode of UNMETNEED.

The following describes the constructed categories in more detail:

Unmet need for spacing includes:

• pregnant women whose pregnancy was mistimed

• postpartum amenorrheic women whose last birth was mistimed, and

• fecund women who are neither pregnant nor postpartum amenorrheic and who are not using any method of family planning and say they want to wait two or more years for their next birth, are undecided about the timing of the next birth, or are undecided whether to have another child.

Unmet need for limiting includes:

• pregnant women whose pregnancy was unwanted

• postpartum amenorrheic women whose last birth was unwanted, and

• fecund women who are neither pregnant nor postpartum amenorrheic and who are not using any method of family planning and who want no more children.

Met need for spacing includes women who are using some method of family planning (including the use of emergency contraception in the past 12 months) and say they want to have another child, are undecided about the timing of the next birth, or are undecided whether they want to have another child.

Met need for limiting includes:

• women who are using family planning (including the use of emergency contraception in the past 12 months) and who want no more children

• women who are sterilized and/or their partners are sterilized, and

• women who are infecund.

Not at risk encompasses women who can't get pregnant or are menopausal, and women who are not sexually active. This group includes:

• women who stated they can't get pregnant or were menopausal

• women who were married 5 or more years ago, have not had any children in the previous 5 years, and have never used contraception

• women who are not postpartum amenorrheic and whose last period was 6 or more months ago, and

• women who reported their last period was before their last birth and their last birth was 5 or more years ago.

• women who are not currently married and have not had sexual intercourse in the last 30 days are assumed to have no need for family planning and are coded as "not sexually active"

No unmet need includes:

• women who are not using any method of family planning, are not pregnant or postpartum amenorrehic, and say they want a child within two years, and

• women who are pregnant or are postpartum amenorrheic who wanted to get pregnant/give birth at the time

Note that the specific methods (modern or traditional) are not taken into account here. It is also important to note that women can be considered postpartum amenorrheic for only two years, which is in contrast to previous definitions of unmet need used by other international survey programs, in which any woman whose period had not resumed since her last birth was considered postpartum amenorrheic for up to five years.

Users should note that there may be inconsistencies between responses in UNMETNEED, which is based on the variable CP, and FPCURRUSE, which reports whether the woman is currently using any method of family planning. FPCURRUSE records the woman's response to a single question that also indicates whether the woman is using any family planning method. In contrast, UNMETNEED and CP are constructed using information from other survey questions. For example, women who reported not being a current user of family planning in FPCURRUSE, but reported using emergency contraception in the past 12 months are coded as a current user in CP and as having no unmet need in UNMETNEED.

The questions used to construct this variable were included in the female questionnaire and the maternal and newborn health baseline survey.

Comparability

There are no comparability issues.

Comparability with IPUMS-DHS

Universe

Availability

• Burkina Faso: 2014-2018, 2020-2022
• Congo (Democratic Republic): 2013-2021
• Cote d'Ivoire: 2017-2018, 2020-2022
• Ethiopia: 2014-2019, 2021
• Ghana: 2013-2017
• India: 2016-2018, 2020-2022
• Indonesia: 2015-2016
• Kenya: 2014-2021
• Niger: 2015-2018, 2020, 2022-2023
• Nigeria: 2014-2021
• Uganda: 2014-2022