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Picture with Lettering women´s lives 1
Study

women's lives

11/1997 - 11/1999

How do women shape and evaluate their lives today and what role does family planning play in their lives? These questions are the focus of this…

Project management

Cornelia Helfferich

Team members

Emily Engelhardt
Alexandra Heneka
Elke Lorenz

Client

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

Women (German nationals only) between the ages of 20 and 44 from three survey regions (Freiburg, Hamburg, Leipzig, each time urban and rural)

 

Telephone survey: n = 1,468, random selection sample from a register of residents;

Face-to-face-interviews: n = 101, contrasting sample composition from those interviewed by telephone in Freiburg and Leipzig

Methodology / Research Design

First survey step
Standardized telephone survey;

  • Instrument/execution: standardized questionnaire, telephone interviews
  • Questionnaire content: reproductive resume with childhood and sexual socialization, relationships, contraception, pregnancies, children and terminations: “milestones”, phase successions, attitude questions, social and family indicators
  • Evaluation with statistics programs: SAS/SPSS


Second survey step
Qualitative-biographical survey;

  • Instrument/execution: theme-based interviews face-to-face, audio recordings, transcription
  • Interview content: biographical narrative starting in childhood covering the aspects of family/relationships, contraception, pregnancies, fertility problems, sexuality, occupation, attitude questions
  • Evaluation: a) biography-oriented: hermeneutical, b) topic-oriented: content-analytical

How do women shape and evaluate their lives today and what role does family planning play in their lives? These questions are the focus of this investigation on women’s reproductive life stories. More than 1,400 women between the ages of 20 and 44 were surveyed between 1998 and 1999.

“Family planning is more than just contraception”

The research design assumes a comprehensive definition of family planning in terms of life planning. This covers aspects such as relationships, sexuality and unwanted childlessness as well as how planned and unplanned pregnancies are dealt with, pregnancy terminations, births and experiences with parenthood.

The high goal of capturing both the subjective and retrospective perspective of women as well as socio-spatial and milieu-specific differences requires the collaboration of family-sociological and demographical perspectives. In addition the study incorporates psychological and cultural scientific insights. With this comprehensive research approach the study closes a gap, because previous investigations dealt almost exclusively with the medical side of the phenomenon of family planning.

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