PREFACE
This report is a summary of a two-day expert meeting on information systems and measurement for assessing program effects and their implications for family planning programs in developing countries. It was sponsored by the Committee on Population and took place on September 9-10, 1993, at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.
At its October 1992 meeting, the Committee on Population discussed the inadequacy of existing data for the evaluation of family planning programs. The members decided to sponsor a meeting that would focus on improving family planning information systems and evaluation in the developing world. To ensure that the discussion would be as broadly based as possible, the committee decided that it was important to include not only experts from within the family planning sector, but also data and evaluation experts from other fields.
The meeting was organized with two specific goals: (1) to compare how various sectors, including family planning, use different types of information to evaluate their programs and (2) to devise innovative ways of linking different types of data in the evaluation of family planning and population programs. In order to attain these goals, seven topics related to data collection were selected:
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Facility inventories (including use of geographic information systems),
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Client, service-based recordkeeping,
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Commodity and other supply inventories,
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Administrative/program recordkeeping,
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Client-provider interactions assessment,
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Intervention follow-up, and
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Household/population-based surveys.
Two participants--one with family planning/population expertise and one with expertise in another field--were assigned to each of the seven topics. They were asked to discuss the usefulness of the specific type of data source for the evaluation of program interventions. All of the participants were asked to write and present short briefing papers on their topic.
This report is a summary of each of the briefing papers that was presented and the discussions that took place following the presentations. It does not attempt to draw conclusions or make recommendations based on the papers and discussions. Rather it summarizes the views of those attending the meeting.
The Committee on Population thanks the Agency for International Development 's
Office of Population, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation for supporting this activity. We are grateful to the committee members who participated in the planning of the meeting: John Casterline, Samuel Preston, Ronald Rindfuss, Susan Scrimshaw, Beth Soldo, and Amy Tsui. We would also like to thank the staff of the National Research Council who assisted in this meeting. Karen Foote worked with Amy Tsui, the meeting chair, to select and invite the participants and to draft this report. Paula Melville ably completed the administrative and logistic arrangements for the meeting. Christine McShane edited the report and assisted in its production.
Finally, the committee would like to thank the experts who prepared papers for the meeting and all the participants in the discussions. Their contributions provided valuable information and approaches for further work in the development of family planning program evaluation in the developing world.
Ronald D. Lee, Chair
Committee on Population