 Nguyen Van Phai, Mai Van Cam, Hoang Xuyen, Technical Specialists, Division of Population and Labor Statistics, General Statistical Office, Hanoi, Vietnam. John Knodel, Professor of Sociology, University of Michigan, Population Studies Center, 1225 South University Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48104. Results from the 1994 Vietnam Inter-censal Demographic Survey reveal substantial change over recent years in reproductive behavior and attitudes. Fertility has continued to decline to a level not far above a total fertility rate of three children per woman. Compared with the late 1980s, contraceptive knowledge has broadened and contraceptive prevalence has increased, reaching a level of 65 percent of currently married women of reproductive age. The dominance of the IUD among modern methods has been reduced somewhat. Stated family-size preferences have shifted noticeably downward. Recently married women indicate that they want only 2.3 children, on average, suggesting that fertility will continue to fall in coming years. These findings suggest that Vietnam is in the midst of a transition that will lead to low levels of fertility in the near future. (Studies in Family Planning 1996; 27,1: 117)
Ulla Larsen, Assistant Professor, Department of Population and International Health, Harvard School of Public Health, 665 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115. This study examines the trends and variations in childlessness, subfertility, and infertility in Tanzania according to data from the 1973 National Demographic Survey and the 199192 Demographic and Health Survey. Between the surveys, the proportion of women older than 30 who were childless was found to have declined more than 60 percent, and the proportion with an open birth interval extending for longer than five years was reduced by 40 to 50 percent in each standard five-year age group from 20 to 39. Within Tanzania, both childlessness and infertility are higher among urban than among rural residents, and a substantial range prevails across eight rural zones. Finally, evidence suggests that the decline in impaired fertility has been followed by an increase in the total fertility rate. The difficulties of implementing population policies that aim simultaneously to control population growth and to improve womens health are discussed. (Studies in Family Planning 1996; 27,1: 1828)
ReportsM. Kathryn Stewart, Reproductive Health Specialist with the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) Program at Macro International, 11785 Beltsville Drive, Calverton, MD 20705. Cynthia K. Stanton, doctoral candidate, Department of Population Dynamics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, Baltimore. Mario Festin, Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Clinical Epidemiology with the Clinical Epidemiology Unit, Philippine General Hospital, Manila. Nora Jacobson, doctoral candidate, Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, Baltimore. This report explores the limitations of survey research for obtaining population-based data to define the magnitude of maternal morbidity in settings that lack a well-developed infrastructure to support women's health requirements. The experience gained in the Philippines Safe Motherhood Survey Project is described. The drawbacks and benefits of the preliminary validation and qualitative phase of research conducted to develop the questionnaire are presented. The survey results indicate that interview-based diagnosis, although it implies the commitment of considerable resources, may be the only way to obtain an idea of the prevalence of some kinds of maternal morbidity in a given population, information necessary to the improvement of obstetric care and women's overall health status. (Studies in Family Planning 1996; 27,1: 2935)
Robert J. Magnani, Associate Professor and H. Gilman McCann, Research Associate Professor, Tulane University Medical Center, School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine, Department of International Health & Development, 1440 Canal Street, Suite 2200, Post Office Box 13, New Orleans, LA 70112. Naomi Rutenberg, Associate and Deputy Director, Africa Family Planning Operations Research Project, The Population Council, Nairobi. This study considers whether pregnancy terminations reported in Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) calendar data can be classified accurately as having been spontaneous or induced based upon other information collected in the survey interview. A classification scheme is proposed that is an adaptation of the method developed by the World Health Organization for categorizing cases in which women admitted to hospitals experienced complications of pregnancy termination. The scheme is evaluated using data from the 1993 Turkey DHS. Evaluation results indicate that the method identifies true cases of induced abortion accurately, but tends to classify a relatively large number of reported spontaneous terminations as induced abortions. However, when it is corrected for likely respondent misreporting of induced abortions as spontaneous terminations, both the sensitivity and specificity of the method appear to be acceptable. (Studies in Family Planning 1996; 27,1: 3643)
Mary Arends-Kuenning, Graduate Student in Economics, Population Studies Center, University of Michigan, and consultant to The Population Council. Barbara Mensch, Associate, Research Division, The Population Council, New York. Maria Rosa Garate, Dissemination and Research Specialist, Programs Division, The Population Council, Lima, Peru. This report reviews the experience of the World Fertility Surveys and the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) in collecting community-level data on family planning. It assesses the validity of the community data for Peru that were collected via a service availability module, much like that which is used for the DHS, through a comparison with data from the situation analysis. The analysis indicates that the knowledgeable informant, the main source of information about family planning in each community for the service availability module, may not be an accurate source of data. Information about the availability of family planning services is more reliable when it is obtained by means of visits to service sites. However, given cost considerations, sampling problems, and analysis issues, routine linkage of situation analyses to household surveys such as the DHS is not recommended at this time. (Studies in Family Planning 1996; 27,1: 4451)
DataZimbabwe 1994: Results from the Demographic and Health Survey
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