**5. Study limitations**

In spite of the consistency of the findings of this chapter with those of previous studies, they could be affected by the fact that information on contraceptive failure was based on women's self-reports, which could be subject to under- or over-reporting. In strict sense, contraceptive failure refers to the occurrence of a pregnancy during sexual intercourse when contraception is used. It is, however, unlikely that women may precisely determine that a pregnancy occurred during a particular sexual act when she or her partner was using contraception. Some women may also have become pregnant when they were not protected at all due to diminished efficacy of the methods they were using after failing to honor appointments for resupply. In addition, as previously mentioned, the exclusion of unmarried women from the study may result in under-reporting of episodes of contraceptive failure if young women who are likely to be unmarried were at higher risk of experiencing failure than their older married counterparts. Contraceptive failure also came out as an emerging issue during data collection and was not the primary objective of the study that provided data for this chapter. Consequently, some information that could further improve our understanding of the dynamics of contraceptive failure in such contexts was not captured, including the specific user and provider deficiencies that contributed to failure and users' agency after experiencing failure.
