Kelsey Holt, ScD, and her research team in the US, Mexico, India, and Ethiopia developed the Quality of Contraceptive Counseling scale to address gaps in measuring patients’ experience with contraceptive counseling. Previous measurement tools tended to focus narrowly on information exchange (rather than the broader counseling experience), lacked probes for negative experiences such as coercion, and/or had not been evaluated for use in diverse settings.

The Quality of Contraceptive Counseling (QCC) Scale was a response to this opportunity for innovation and is now available to download and use in your contraceptive care research and programming.

Four versions of the QCC Scale are available: QCC-Mexico (Spanish; 22 items), QCC-Ethiopia (Amharic & Afan Oromo; 26 items), QCC-India (Gujarati; 23 items), and the QCC-10 (10 items; constructed with data from each of these countries).

The QCC Scale is appropriate to use with anyone who has recently discussed contraception options with a health care provider at a health facility or other community-based setting. The items were designed to produce comparable scores regardless of the depth of counseling provided, which methods are available, and whether the client chooses to use a method at the end of the session.