The Situation Analysis Approach To Assessing Family Planning And Reproductive Health Services

This publication presents tools and techniques for measuring service delivery in health and education and people's experiences from the field in deploying these methods. It begins by providing an introduction to the different methodological tools available for evaluating the performance of the health and education sectors. Country specific experiences are then explored to highlight lessons on the challenges, advantages and disadvantages of using different techniques to measure quality in a variety of different contexts and of using the resulting data to affect change. This book is a valuable resource for those who seek to enhance capacity for the effective measurement of service delivery in order to improve accountability and governance and enhance the quality of service delivery in developing countries.

Health facility surveys come in various guises. One dimension in which they vary is their motivation. Some seek to understand better links between households and providers. Others seek to understand better provider behavior and performance. Still others seek to understand the interrelationships between providers, while yet others seek to shed light on the linkages between government and providers. Health facility surveys differ too in the data they collect, in part due to the different motivations. Surveys also vary in the way they collect data, some relying on direct observation, some on record review, and some on interview. Some quality data are collected through clinical vignettes. Facility data have been put to a variety of uses, including planning and budgeting; monitoring, evaluation, and promoting accountability; and research. Lindel and Wagstaff review some of the literature under each heading and offer some conclusions regarding the current state of health facility surveys.

This fifth book of Volume 19 contains only a portion of publications which appeared between July 1 and December 31, 2008. The first three books of Volume 19 contain Special Collection 7, "Childbearing Trends and Policies in Europe." The fourth and fifth books of Volume 19 contain the subsequent articles. Book IV contains articles 30 through 45, and book V contains articles 46 through 62. All material published in volume 19, as well as full journal content, is available as open access material at: http: //www.demographic-research.org/.