PMA Agile, a project within Performance Monitoring for Action (PMA, formerly PMA2020), sought a means of measuring contraceptive awareness and use among adolescents and youth as they enter a period of probable sexual activity. PMA Agile typically monitors contraception uptake via clinic-based surveys of providers and clients; however, in this age group, it is suspected that youth and adolescents may be procuring contraceptives via other means, making young contraceptors effectively “hidden” to clinic staff and compromising the accuracy of clinic-based survey measures. Capturing information from youth clients of health facilities, especially unmarried females, is challenging due to social and familial pressure to hide sexual activity and contraceptive use.
It is within this context that PMA Agile in collaboration with the College of Medicine, University of Ibadan and the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs (CCP) conducted a survey of youth aged 15-24 years in Lagos using respondent-driven sampling (RDS) methodology. This study follows two previous YRDS studies in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire in 2018 (AIBEF & PMA Agile, 2019) and Nairobi, Kenya (ICRHK & PMA Agile, 2019).