Measuring the effects of unintended pregnancy on women's quality of life.
BACKGROUND
This study was conducted to assess the potential impact of an unintended pregnancy on women's quality of life.


METHODS
We asked 192 nonpregnant women to report how they would feel if they learned that they were pregnant using a visual analog scale (VAS), a time trade-off (TTO) metric, a standard gamble (SG) metric and a willingness-to-pay (WTP) metric.


RESULTS
Women's anticipated responses to an unintended pregnancy varied widely. Using a VAS, 8% reported pregnancy would make them feel like they were dying. To avoid pregnancy, 28% of women were willing to trade time from the end of their life (TTO), 16% of women were willing to accept an immediate risk of death (SG) and 60% of women were willing to pay some amount of money (WTP). On average, women, using the VAS, TTO and SG metrics, reported that an unintended pregnancy would create a health utility state (where 0 represents death and 1 represents perfect health) of 0.487, 0.992 and 0.997, respectively.


CONCLUSIONS
The anticipated effects of pregnancy on women's quality of life should be integrated into cost-effectiveness analyses of family planning services.
Schwarz
Eleanor Bimla
EB
Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine, Center for Research on Health Care, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA. schwarzeb@upmc.edu
Smith
Rachel
R
Steinauer
Jody
J
Reeves
Matthew F
MF
Caughey
Aaron B
AB
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D011247:Pregnancy; D049168:Pregnancy, Unplanned / Q000523:psychology*; D011788:Quality of Life; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult