Measuring Informed Choice for Contraception in Burkina Faso: Comparing Self-Rated and Researcher-Ascribed Measures

Brooke W. Bullington (), Katherine Tumlinson, Nathalie Sawadogo, Claire W. Rothschild and Leigh Senderowicz
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Brooke W. Bullington: University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health
Katherine Tumlinson: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Nathalie Sawadogo: Université Joseph Ki-ZERBO
Claire W. Rothschild: Population Services International
Leigh Senderowicz: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2025, vol. 179, issue 2, No 21, 1119-1141

Abstract: Abstract While self-rated measures that rely on participant’s perceptions of themselves are common in public health, they remain underused in contraceptive research. Family planning scholars often rely on researcher-ascribed measures of success that capture whether people have the criteria researchers deem necessary for a given outcome. As family planning researchers shift toward rights-based outcomes, understanding women’s perceptions of their contraceptive knowledge is imperative. We sought to determine whether researcher-ascribed measures of contraceptive knowledge or information provided during contraceptive counseling and self-rated measures of informed choice for contraception align. Informed choice captures whether people have sufficient, unbiased information about their contraceptive options. Using data from a population-based sample of 3,929 reproductive-aged women in Burkina Faso, we compared researcher-ascribed measures, including the informed choice subdomain of the contraceptive autonomy indicator (CAIC) and the Method Information Index (MII), with novel self-rated measures of informed choice developed based on formative research, including in-depth interviews and focus group discussions, that capture people’s perceptions of their contraceptive knowledge (self-rated overall informed choice and self-rated method-specific informed choice) using Cohen’s Kappa Statistic. We find that researcher-ascribed measures of contraceptive knowledge and counseling content diverge substantially from self-rated measures of informed choice. CAIC and self-rated overall informed choice had no agreement (Kappa: -0.03); the MII and self-rated method-specific informed choice had no to slight agreement (Kappa = 0.05). These findings reveal that the information researchers consider important for informed choice may not align with women’s perceptions of their informed choice. Both researcher-ascribed and self-rated measures provide uniquely important information needed to inform family planning programs and should be measured on population-based surveys. This study demonstrates the differences between researcher-ascribed and self-rated measures in family planning research, highlighting the importance of both types of measures.

Keywords: Family planning; Contraception; Autonomy; Measurement; Informed choice; Self-rated measures; Person-centered measurement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1007/s11205-025-03650-6

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