Table 5.
Young women’s measures of agency: Participation in decision-making, ability to visit alone and self-efficacy and composite agency scores by marital status, Jharkhand 2012
| Married | Unmarried | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (n = 690) | (n = 691) | ||||
| n | % | n | % | p-value1 | |
| Participation in decision-making | |||||
| Choosing a friend | (71) | (82) | <0.001 | ||
| Spending money | (22) | (26) | 0.061 | ||
| Buying cloths for own | (17) | (18) | 0.530 | ||
| Own health care | (8) | (1) | <0.001 | ||
| Choosing any doctor | (6) | (1) | <0.001 | ||
| When to get pregnant | (9) | n/a | -- | ||
| When to get married | n/a | (3) | -- | ||
| Mobility | |||||
| Able to visit program inside village alone | 96 | (14) | 106 | (15) | 0.453 |
| Able to visit shop inside village alone | 174 | (25) | 359 | (52) | <0.001 |
| Able to visit friend inside village alone | 172 | (25) | 318 | (46) | <0.001 |
| Able to visit program outside village alone | 20 | (3) | 23 | (3) | 0.646 |
| Able to visit shop outside village alone | 26 | (4) | 23 | (3) | 0.658 |
| Able to visit friend outside village alone | 14 | (2) | 14 | (2) | 0.997 |
| Able to visit doctor alone | 12 | (2) | 4 | (1) | 0.044 |
| Self-efficacy | |||||
| No difficulty expressing opinion to elders | 163 | (24) | 159 | (23) | 0.787 |
| Can talk confidently to a provider on SRH issues including abortion | 153 | (22) | 103 | (15) | 0.001 |
| Can initiate discussing issues related to SRH with my friends | 217 | (31) | 141 | (20) | <0.001 |
| Can help my friends to choose a trained doctor who provides abortion | 146 | (21) | 47 | (7) | <0.001 |
| Able to say “no” to sex if I don’t feel like having sex | 238 | (35) | -- | -- | -- |
| Composite agency scores | |||||
| Mean | (sd) | Mean | (sd) | ||
| Decision making [Range: 0–12] | 2.5 | (2.25) | 2.6 | (1.79) | 0.372 |
| Choice of mobility [Range: 0–12] | 6.6 | (1.93) | 7.5 | (1.67) | <0.001 |
| Access to money [Range: 0–3] | 0.2 | (0.63) | 0.1 | (0.56) | 0.005 |
| Sense of self-worth [Range: 0–4] | 0.9 | (1.15) | 0.6 | (0.89) | <0.001 |
| Overall Agency [Range: 0–33] | 10.2 | (3.99) | 10.8 | (3.06) | 0.005 |
1P-value associated with Z-test of two sample proportions