Contraception and Reproductive Health Measurement Instruments for Adolescents and Youth: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Background

The contraception and reproductive health of adolescents and youth is critical to their development and global public health. In order to provide useful references for choosing and optimizing adolescent contraception and reproductive health measurement instruments, the objective of this review is to summarize existing relevant measurement instruments and analyze them in terms of application characteristics, comparison of traditional and newly developed instruments, and psychometric properties.

Methods

A literature search was conducted of three databases (PubMed, Web of Science, and Embase Database) on articles published between database creation and March 2023, involving contraception and reproductive health measurement instruments for adolescents and youth. After critical appraisal, inductive content analysis was conducted.

Results

Eventually 14 measuring instruments that met the criteria were included. Most of these instruments have been developed for adolescents and youth and are reliable. Five of the instruments were developed specifically for females and none for male adolescents. In contrast to traditional instruments measuring adolescents’ contraceptive knowledge and contraceptive self-efficacy, newly developed instruments in recent years have focused on including the community and the family in their measurement.

Conclusion

This review systematically summarizes existing measurement instruments for contraception and reproductive health among adolescents and youth. It provides a solid basis for promoting the use of existing instruments and the development of new ones.

Keywords:

• Contraception
• sexual and reproductive health
• adolescents
• youth
• measuring instruments

Authors’ contributions

ML and QX wrote the main manuscript text. ML, YR and YX were responsible for the investigation. YZ and CN were responsible for writing reviews and editing. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant number 82101674], the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province, China [Grant number BK20210815] and The Natural Science Foundation of the Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions of China [Grant number 21KJB310022].