Measurement of Human Flourishing Constructs in Evaluation of Voluntary Family Planning Interventions: A Modified Scoping Review of the Literature

Managing one’s fertility and determining the timing of one’s pregnancies is integral to human flourishing. An emerging body of literature focuses on global measurement of human flourishing. Despite significant debates in the field, the goal of measuring human flourishing is to understand what it means to live life well. We conducted a modified scoping review of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method grey and white literature to identify the extent to which evaluations of interventions aiming to increase the use of voluntary family planning include measures of human flourishing. We searched for peer-reviewed articles published from 2007 to 2025 across four databases (PubMed, Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Science Direct). We completed a full-text review of 583 documents and identified 111 that contain both a behavioral measure of contraceptive use and the measurement of at least one flourishing construct. We captured both the flourishing constructs and measures used. The most measured flourishing constructs were self-efficacy, shared decision-making, social support, mental health, and agency. Less frequently, evaluations measured happiness/pleasure/joy, empowerment, emotional intimacy, physical health, meaning/purpose, social capital, autonomy, trust, and wellbeing. Among the 111 articles, 76 (68.5%) of them included both flourishing-related intervention components and evaluation measures. Twenty-three measured flourishing-related outcomes in the evaluation but did not explicitly include flourishing components in the intervention. Collectively, these findings suggest that there is room for growth to fully understand the relationship between voluntary family planning interventions and the construct of human flourishing.