The impact of family planning on women's lives: expanding the research agenda.

Women's reproductive health, quality of life, human rights, and status in society have become the focus for international development and public health programs in the 1990s. This reflects a growing awareness that population programs and policies have often failed to take women's needs into account and excluded women from programmatic decision making. Needed is a new research agenda aimed at documenting the impact of family planning programs on women beyond their physical health. Salient research questions include the influence of gender relations on women's ability to select and use family planning methods, men's views of women's contraceptive use, the circumstances under which contraceptive use contributes to a sense of self-worth and autonomy, and the extent to which family planning adoption enables women to achieve long-term goals. This research agenda will require an interdisciplinary approach that draws from sociology, social psychology, economics, and the health sciences. The incorporation of qualitative methods into research designs is recommended to clarify the nuances of women's experiences. Culture-specific measures to constructs such as self-esteem, autonomy, and satisfaction must be developed. Most important is creation of a dialogue between researchers and actual and potential users of family planning aimed at defining and examining central issues.