Responses to survey questions asking whether female young people have ever been pregnant and whether male young people have ever caused someone to be pregnant

Data Source(s):

Surveys of program participants or youth in the program‘s intended population

Purpose:

Many adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health (AYSRH) programs aim to reduce the number of pregnancies among young people. This indicator provides a simple proxy measure of the level or volume of preg­nancies among young people for use in assessing the impact of such programs.

Issue(s):

In settings where sexual relations and pregnancy out­side of marriage are highly stigmatized, female respon­dents to surveys will likely under-report adolescent preg­nancies occurring outside of marriage. Responses by male adolescents may also be biased, but the direction of the bias is less certain. On the one hand, males who have had multiple casual sexual partners may be un­aware of pregnancies they caused. On the other hand, male adolescents may exaggerate their sexual prowess in surveys, and thus may over-report the number of preg­nancies they caused. Nevertheless, in most settings, the indicator provides a lower-bound estimate of the true percent of adolescents experiencing or causing preg­nancies.