Bibliometric Analysis of Published Literature on the Determinants of Family Planning

Abstract

Our study reviews published literature about the determinants of family planning, specifically studies that examined contraceptive use, non-use, and unmet need. We sought to understand the state of knowledge in the field, particularly as it relates to when, where, and by whom that knowledge is produced. Our extensive scoping review identified all articles published between 2000-2016 on the determinants of family planning in FP2020 countries. We use bibliometric tools and techniques to identify authors’ institutional and national affiliations, as well as their citation counts to assess how authorship characteristics contribute to knowledge production. We found that most research on family planning was collaborative and focused on a single country of interest. Teams of authors had the highest rates of publication across all family planning outcomes, with teams of men and women representing the largest authorship type based on gender and teams from the Global South representing the largest group based on global location. However, our bibliometric analysis found that characteristics associated with most family planning behavior research were not those associated with citation counts. In particular, research published by authors affiliated with Global South institutions received significantly less citations compared to groups of authors affiliated with institutions in the Global North and Global South. Citations counts are often seen as a measure of scientific impact and attention paid by the scientific community to specific research results. Our findings indicate preference for certain authorship characteristics over others based on citations, implicating concerns about knowledge diffusion disparities in family planning literature.

Aasli Abdi Nur

Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Computational Demography

Aasli Abdi Nur, PhD, MPH, is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Oxford.