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Picture with Lettering women´s lives 4
Study

women's lives 4 – family planning throughout life

Family planning among women aged 20 to 44 years

07/2023 - 06/2025

The project ‘frauen leben 4’ (women's lives 4) continues the research of ‘frauen leben 3’ (women's lives 3) in the German federal states of Baden-Württemberg, Berlin, Lower Saxony and Saxony. In 2012, the first comprehensive survey of women on family planning throughout life conducted in these federal states. The federal state-specific data are now being updated and should also allow comparisons over time.

Project participants

Team lead

Tilmann Knittel

Team member / collaboration

Laura Olejniczak, Hatice Eldiven, SoFFI F.

Project assistance

Petra Stromberger

Research institution

Sozialwissenschaftliches FrauenForschungsInstitut Freiburg an der Ev. Hochschule Freiburg (SoFFI F.)
https://www.soffi-f.de/ 

Cooperation partners

infas Institut für angewandte Sozialwissenschaft GmbH (Institute for Applied Social Science)
https://www.infas.de/ 

Client

Federal Centre for Health Education (BZgA)
https://www.bzga.de/home/bzga/

Data collection

by infas Institut für angewandte Sozialwissenschaft GmbH (Institute for Applied Social Science)

www.infas.de

Target group / Sample

Planned target group: at minimum 5,500 women between the ages of 20 and 44 in Baden-Württemberg, Berlin, Lower Saxony and Saxony

Objectives

  • Collecting reliable data on developments in family planning, attitudes to family and contraception in the selected German federal states

  • To provide a time comparison with the previous survey, the selection of the German federal states examined at the same time should be the same as for the previous data collection ‘frauen leben 3’ (women's lives 3)

  • Research questions:

    • In what phases of life and in what living conditions and in what situational conditions children are (un)desired?

    • What do women think about ‘the right time in life to have a child’ and the appropriate family size?

    • What influences contraceptive choice and use? And what are people’s attitudes towards hormonal contraception?

    • How do current social, economic and legal conditions and medical and technological developments and opportunities affect family planning?

    • How has family planning changed over time?

Methodology / Research design

  • Mixed-Methods-Design

  • Online survey based on a random sample of address data from registry offices
    To ensure comparability with the data collected in the context of ‘frauen leben 3’ (women’s lives 3), appropriate procedures and measures will be implemented to identify, assess and control possible systematic effects of the methodological change

  • 20 additional open interviews conducted using a guided questionnaire

A unique database on family planning has been created as part of ‘frauen leben 3’ (women’s lives 3) under the lead of Prof Dr Cornelia Helfferich: between 2011 and 2022, around 19,000 women from all sixteen German federal states were interviewed successively on this topic.

Current survey

The ‘frauen leben 4’ (women’s lives 4) survey is designed to continue this successful monitoring. To enable consistent comparisons over time, the ‘frauen leben 4’ (women’s lives 4) survey will be conducted in the same four German federal states that were selected for the first phase of ‘frauen leben 3’ (women’s lives 3) in 2012. These are Baden-Württemberg, Berlin, Lower Saxony and Saxony. These four German federal states are representative in terms of social structure and family planning-related characteristics (e.g. risk of poverty, abortion rates, proportions of singles and single parents).

Relevance of the research project

As in its predecessor, ‘frauen leben 4’ (women’s lives 4) make once again an effective contribution to fulfilling the BZgA's legal mandate to develop concepts in the fields of sexuality education and family planning. The research results are intended to encourage and continue an interdisciplinary discourse on sexuality, contraception and family planning.

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