{"id":924,"date":"2010-04-21T16:14:27","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T16:14:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hub-dev.bates.edu\/magazine\/?page_id=924"},"modified":"2017-09-06T11:38:50","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T15:38:50","slug":"curious-conclusion-about-contraception","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/back-issues\/y2007\/fall07\/quad-angles\/curious-conclusion-about-contraception\/","title":{"rendered":"Curious Conclusion about Contraception"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most theses have just two parts. First, you choose a topic. Second, you spend months developing what economics professor James Hughes calls \u201ctrue explanations\u201d for anything and everything that turns up.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Audrey Nunez '07 discusses her economics thesis with James Hughes, the College's Thomas Sowell Professor of Economics, in his Pettingill Hall office. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen.<\/p><\/div>\n

But for Audrey Nu\u00f1ez \u201907, whose economics thesis<\/a> compared the effects of contraceptive policies in two countries \u2014 Belize and her homeland of Honduras \u2014 the thesis saga continued through spring, summer, and fall with parts three, four, and five.<\/p>\n

There was the unsettling part (her results contradicted her hypothesis), the rare part (it got published), and the transformative part (the experience prompted her to return to Honduras).<\/p>\n

Using survey data, Nu\u00f1ez had hypothesized that in Honduras, where contraception use is supported by government hospitals and fieldworkers, the fertility rate would be lower than in Belize, where contraception use is only supported indirectly, by NGOs and the like.<\/p>\n

But Nu\u00f1ez, a French and economics double major, discovered the opposite is true. \u201cBelizean women are more likely to use contraception,\u201d she says. And despite government support of contraceptive use, Honduran women have more children than Belizean women.<\/p>\n

Last summer, Nu\u00f1ez\u2019s one-semester thesis was published online by the University of Costa Rica\u2019s Central American Population Studies Center, which provided Nu\u00f1ez\u2019s data. Publishing a one-semester thesis is rare at Bates and nationally, says Hughes, the College\u2019s Thomas Sowell Professor of Economics. \u201cAudrey\u2019s is the first of my students\u2019 one-semester theses to be published in its entirety.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nu\u00f1ez\u2019s thesis results, though \u201cvery unexpected,\u201d didn\u2019t dissuade her from further exploration. \u201cI want to find out the reasons for the incongruity,\u201d she says. (One reason could be that Belize programs better educate women about contraceptive use.) And, she wonders, if government support for contraceptive use isn\u2019t very effective, what else in her country might not be bringing assumed benefits?<\/p>\n

This epiphany led to part five of her thesis: She elected to defer graduate school to work in Honduras. \u201cMy country needs young professionals willing to recognize problems and make a difference,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most theses have just two parts. First, you choose a topic. Second,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":0,"parent":916,"menu_order":8,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_dimp_site_id":"","_dimp_override_contact":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"class_list":["post-924","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=924"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11626,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/924\/revisions\/11626"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}