Women's patterns of contraceptive use

Our purpose in conducting this research was to examine women's patterns of contraceptive use. Records for 800 women receiving care at a private, nonprofit agency providing well-woman and contraceptive care over a 15-year period constitute the data set. The records were examined for patterns of reported method choice and use, method destinations, first method choice, and demographic variables. Women reported making 1,889 method choices from among 16 different methods. Seventy-five percent of the women changed methods at least once and the women gave 1,036 reasons for changing methods. Oral contraceptives and condoms were the methods most commonly tried by the women. The women's patterns of contraceptive use were very individualized, were neither linear nor predictive as other investigators have reported, and method destinations could not be predicted from previous method use.