Comparing the Peru service availability module and situation analysis

This report reviews the experience of the World Fertility Surveys and the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) in collecting community-level data on family planning. It assesses the validity of the community data for Peru that were collected via a service availability module, much like that which is used for the DHS, through a comparison with data from the Situation Analysis. The analysis indicates that the knowledgeable informant, the main source of information about family planning in each community for the service availability module, may not be an accurate source of data. Information about the availability of family planning services is more reliable when it is obtained by means of visits to service sites. However, given cost considerations, sampling problems, and analysis issues, routine linkage of Situation Analyses to household surveys such as the DHS is not recommended at this time.