title: Reproductive practices by patterns of marriage among Iranian women: study protocol for an explanatory sequential mixed methods design.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Nowadays, nearly half of the world population lives in societies with low fertility or the below-replacement fertility. This potentially grounds the critical situation of reduction in the workforce and causes the aging of population due to an overall increase in life expectancy and standard of living. Hence, population and its transitions including the issue of fertility decline has become a topic of intense debate in the agenda-setting and policy-making processes in both the developed and developing countries. In this view, what can practically be done to respond to the fertility decline that entails effectively addressing the determinants of fertility change? In line with the literature, how people form their marriages or patterns of marriage is amongst influencing factors which potentially affect their reproductive practices as diverse societies recognize different conventions for marriage. This study is to examine women's reproductive practices by the various patterns of marriage using the explanatory sequential mixed methods design.
  
  
  METHODS
  This study has an explanatory sequential mixed methods design, the follow-up explanations variant model, with two strands. This design will be implemented in two distinct phases. In the first phase, a cross-sectional quantitative study will be done using a cluster sampling strategy on 850 married women 15-49 years old living in Babol city, Iran. In order to obtain a deeper understanding of the results of the quantitative phase, researchers will implement a qualitative research in the second phase of this study. This design will provide an explanation of the quantitative research results using the qualitative evidence.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  As patterns of marriage have implications for the status of women, their health and fertility, the result of this study can provide a rich source of information for the required health-related interventions and policies are required to put the demographic changes on the right track at micro and macro level and improve the reproductive practices of women at micro level.
authors.affiliation: Department of Midwifery and Reproductive Health, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Ziba
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Taghizadeh
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tehran, Tehran, 14117-13118, Iran.|HRA, UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, UK.
authors.forename: Abouali
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Vedadhir
authors.affiliation: PhD Candidate in Reproductive Health, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. f.behmanesh2015@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Fereshteh
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Behmanesh
authors.affiliation: Behavioral Sciences Research Center (BSRC) and Faculty of Nursing, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Abbas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ebadi
authors.affiliation: Department of Management and Health Economics, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Abulghasem
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pourreza
authors.affiliation: Department of Demography, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.|Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Canberra, Canberra, Australia.
authors.forename: Mohammad Jalal
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Abbasi-Shavazi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005193:Family Planning Services; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007492:Iran; D008297:Male; D008393:Marriage / Q000639:trends*; D011157:Population Dynamics; D012098:Reproduction; D043762:Reproductive Behavior