Quality, accessibility, and contraceptive use in rural Tanzania

We examine how informants' reports on community perceptions of the quality and accessibility of family planning facilities relate to the use of modern contraceptives by individuals in rural Tanzania. Using information on indi vidual-level contraceptive use in conjunction with community-level informat ion on the accessibility and quality of family planning facilities, we empl oy two distinct statistical procedures to illustrate the impacts of accessi bility and quality on contraceptive use. Both procedures treat the communit y-level variables as imperfect indicators of characteristics of the facilit ies, and they yield nearly identical implications. We find that a community -level, subjective perception of a family planning facility's quality has a significant impact on community members' contraceptive use whereas other c ommunity measures such as time, distance, and subjective perception of acce ssibility have trivial and insignificant direct impacts, net of the control variables. Future research that uncovers the determinants of perceptions o f both community-level and individual-level quality could provide key insig hts for developing effective and efficient family planning programs.