Direct and Judgmental Measures of Family Planning Program Inputs

This report compares two different approaches to measuring the strength of family planning programs in Bangladesh and Kenya. The first approach, the judgmental approach, has been used in a number of studies during the past two decades; scores on the characteristics of family planning programs are derived from the responses knowledgeable persons give to a series of questions. The second approach is to obtain direct measures of each item being considered. In Bangladesh, the total score varied trivially between the direct and the judgmental approaches. In Kenya, the total direct score was substantially higher than the judgmental score. The primary advantage of the judgmental approach is that comparative scores can be obtained for a larger number of countries for the same time period at a much lower cost than would be required by the direct approach.