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Abstract
Retrospective data on family planning were collected in a sample survey in Melbourne for the period, 1925–71, with detailed analysis for 1940–71. An attempt is made to measure the intensity and effectiveness of contraception by using the concept of main method and by dividing the period into twelve shorter time spans. Changes in total family planning practice and in the employment of specific methods are analysed by birth cohorts and by various characteristics of the respondents. The level of family planning practice is shown to have risen consistently to a point where further rise is hardly possible. The level of practice is more a function of time and technology than of age. Successive waves of innovational change in contraceptive practice over the last third of a century are distinguished.
The data were drawn from 2,652 completed interviews undertaken in Melbourne in August–December, 1971. Interviewing and analysis were complicated by the large number of immigrants and the substantial fraction of these who did not speak English.