Quality-of-life Assessment of Family Planning Adopters through User Perspectives in the District of Karimnagar

BACKGROUND: Small families adopting family planning are usually considered happy families. They are expected to lead a better qualitative life. Quality-of-life (QOL) is routinely assessed for knowing patients’ health status. Recently, the QOL concept has become increasingly popular for evaluating the impact of public health interventions. Hitherto, QOL is usually assessed by means of program achievements or indicators, which may sometimes be misleading. Hence, the new culture of QOL assessment by means of user perspectives is now becoming popular. Research Questions: 1) Is the quality-of-life of family planning (FP) adopters better than that of non-FP adopters? 2) Are the user perspectives helpful in QOL assessment? MATERIALS AND METHODS: A cross-sectional descriptive study was carried out among 50 FP adopting families and 50 non-FP adopting families from the village of Vutoor and the city of Karimnagar in Andhra Pradesh. SAMPLING METHODS: Random sampling, Proportions and Chi square test. RESULTS: Program perspectives revealed a better standard of living for FP adopters because they have amenities like housing, television, and vehicles and less mortality and morbidity (P < 0.001). However, they lack positive feelings towards life, general adaptation, personal relationships, and leisure opportunities. Finally, self-assessment by FP adopters themselves revealed no significant increase in their qualitative life after family planning (P = 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: While assessing the impact of a health program on quality-of-life, multiple methods of assessments including user perspectives are better than program indicators alone.