Introduction to the Special Issue

Indicators in Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights

Bibliographic Data

ID10794850
AuthorsJeffrey B Bingenheimer (0000-0002-1427-0402, Milken Institute School of Public Health, George Washington University, corresponding author), Karen Hardee (0000-0003-2545-6269, President, What Works Association), Michelle J Hindin (0000-0001-9941-7639, Global Impact), Michelle Hindin (Independent Consultant, Evidence 4 Global Impact LLC), Aparna Jain (0000-0003-1683-3341, Senior Director, Making Cents International & Chief of Party, CARE‐GBV), Joyce Mumah (0000-0001-6181-6837, Technical Lead, Monitoring and Evaluation ‐ WISH2ACTION, International Planned Parenthood Federation), Johannes van Dam (Senior Director of Health Services, PATH)
Year2023
Volume54
Issue1
Pages9-16
Publication date2023-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueStudies in Family Planning (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0039-3665 • E-ISSN: 1728-4465
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/sifp.12239
PMID36939037
OpenAlexW4327896647
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited35

In August of 2021, the Editorial Committee of Studies in Family Planning put out a call for abstracts for a special issue focused on indicators in sexual and reproductive health and rights.We did so in response to our perception of a growing demand in the field not only for advances in measurement, with fresh thinking on ways to measure progress beyond existing indicators, many of which have been critiqued as more program-centered than personcentered-but also for various strands of work on measurement to be brought together.A special issue of the journal struck us as a promising way to advance conversations about indicators and measurement that were already underway in the field.And Studies in Family Planning seemed like an ideal forum for such discussions given the journal's long-standing role as an outlet for such work.Take unmet need for contraception as an example.Critiques of the conceptualization and operationalization of unmet need published in Studies date back to 1992 (Dixon-Mueller and Germain, 1992).An entire special issue of the journal was devoted to unmet need for contraception in 2014.Several of the contributions discussed the strengths and limitations of the operationalization of this construct (Bradley and Casterline, 2014;Cleland, Harbison, and Shah, 2014).More recently, Bell and Bishai (2017) suggested that unmet need as currently operationalized may exaggerate the extent of need by failing to account fully for variations in coital frequency; Rominsky and Stephenson (2019) suggested incorporating method dissatisfaction into the operationalization of unmet need; Rothschild, Brown, and Drake (2021) explored implication of doing so; and Karra (2022) suggested a radically different approach to operationalizing unmet need.The limitations of unmet need also served as a key motivation for Senderowicz's (2020) introduction of contraceptive autonomy as a new indicator for family planning programs.Studies in Family Planning has also played a key role in discussions of other important concepts and indicators, such as a measure of quality of contraceptive counseling and service provision (Blanc et al

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