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The seminar took place at the Villa Lapas Hotel, Jacó, Costa Rica, May 14-16, 1997. The seminar was sponsored by:
Background Contemporary demographic transition has taken place in an era when expansion and development of family planning programs has been the central theme of population policies. The rising costs of these programs, it's impact, rationality and social benefits are being discussed and debated. These discussions and debates are crucial to define the programs role on the demographic transition. The International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) has promoted considerable research on the subject, which has produced an abundance of papers on the dynamics of contraceptive use, the impact of family planing on fertility, programs effectively, etc. But there remain unsolved methodological problems which deserve priority. Some researchers have developed new statistical methods that can be applied to the subject. The purpose of this Seminar is to gather experts on these methods to discuss their use and impact in the analysis of family planning programs on contemporary demographic transition. Seminar prospectus The IUSSP Committee on Fertility and Family Planning will collaborate with the USAID-funded EVALUATION Project at the Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina, USA on the preparation of a text for the evaluation of family planning programs. Contemporary demographic transitions have occurred in an era when the expansion and development of family planning programs has been a central theme of population policies. The recurrent costs of these programs--their impact, rationale and social benefits--continue to be the subject of considerable discussion and debate. Resolving the debate and clarifying the demographic role of programs represents a critical issue for research. IUSSP attention to this research need is not new. The early years of family planning program development fostered a series of important studies on demographic methods for the statistical evaluation of family planning programs. This work culminated in a 1975 volume edited by C. Chandrasekaran and A. Hermalin on methods for evaluating family planning programs. In the early 1980s the Union held two additional seminars on the evaluation theme which resulted in publications that highlighted the role of surveys for analyzing the relationship between program interventions and subsequent contraceptive and fertility change. This methodological work led to a proliferation of research on the analysis of contraceptive use dynamics, fertility impact on contraception, and program effectiveness. Although several of the methodologies developed in this series continued to be employed in research on the demographic role of family planning programs, unresolved methodological problems merit research priority. Family planning programs have expanded in size, number and technical complexity. Research on reproductive change has proliferated because of the large-scale data collection activities of the Demographic and Health Survey and its predecessor, the World Fertility Survey. The role of family planning programs in explaining these trends is nonetheless unresolved. New statistical methods have been developed that may be applied to this challenging issue. The IUSSP can contribute to evaluation research by assembling this methodological work in a single interpretive volume for evaluation researchers and demographic educators. An exigesis of evaluation is much needed. Methods for examining the role of programs as a determinant of reproductive change has received somewhat less emphasis in the literature than survey methods for analyzing the pace of reproductive change. Most notably, controlled experiments have fallen into disuse for family planning programs. There has been a proliferation of operations research issues, but most such research is problem specific or feasibility-study oriented, contributing little to general policy deliberations on whether programs work or which policies work best. Moreover, the growing complexity of family planning programs poses difficult theoretical and analytic challenges for evaluation research. With the melding of broader reproductive health with family planning programs, the integration of clinical measurement requires epidemiological models, surveillance procedures, and morbidity assessment not previously required in the family planning research armamentarium. Analytical methods developed in the past two decades, such as hazards regression and event history analysis, have conceptual appeal in health and family planning research. However, the methodological literature remains confined to technical journals where there is little scope to present practical applications of how new methods can be applied in the fertility and family planning evaluation field. Despite the widening range of evaluation research methods that are available for assessing program achievements and impact, the underlying principles of evaluation theory and scientific measurement for establishing causality remain unresolved. The 1994 Cairo International Conference on
Population and Development (ICPD) consensus poses new challenges to evaluation
researchers to expand their research agenda beyond demographics to include a
focus on the impact of programs on social institutions, the quality of
reproductive health services, and gender roles. Some of the new questions of
impact posed as a result of ICPD will require methodologies that have been been
developed since the 1975 effort. Longitudinal and experimental studies are
implicit in the ICPD research agenda and this volume will describe these
techniques and their applications to family planning and related health
programs. | ||||||
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