New data for evidencing and estimating the prevalence of traditional contraceptive use in sub-Saharan Africa

Nurudeen Alhassan, African Institute for Development Policy (AFIDEP)
Nyovani Madise
Naa Dodua Dodoo, University of Ghana
Jamaica Corker, Independent Researcher
Ernestina Coast, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
Themba Mzembe, African Institute for Development Policy (AFIDEP)
Eliya M. Zulu, African Institute for Development Policy (AFIDEP)

Globally, an estimated 92 million women use traditional methods of contraception. Yet, traditional methods and those who use them are marginalized in family planning interventions. Recent research has suggested the underestimation of traditional contraceptive method use in nationally representative surveys such DHS. This underestimation stems from the framing of questions on contraceptive use in surveys, data collection approaches and the procedure taken by surveys in reporting only the most effective method of contraception when a respondent reports using more than one method. In this paper, we describe a new dataset from a cross-country comparative study on the measurement of traditional and modern contraceptive methods in DRC, Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria. We also examine the effects of methodological innovation on estimates of traditional and modern contraceptives in the dataset. The results show that probing increased the percentage of women reporting traditional method use by 2.4% and modern methods by 12% in DRC. Asking follow-up questions on contraceptive use to all women decreased the percentage of women that reported not currently using any method by 6% in Ghana and Nigeria. The results suggest the need for methodological revisions to surveys such as DHS to improve the accuracy of contraceptive prevalence estimates.

Keywords: Family Planning and Contraception, Data and Methods

See extended abstract.