Copyright 1999, the National Academy Press. Keywords, machine extracted. Top 50 words repeated twice, next 100 once, plus phrases. How can diffusion be defined in the population and family planning con 2. The goal of the workshop was not to achieve consensus on these questions but to delineate the issues involved, summarize what is known, highlight areas of agreement, identify key areas of disagreement that require further study, and, insofar as possible, characterize the policy and program options.
Much overlap therefore occurs throughout the text that follows, as it did at the workshop.
Pure Versus Blended Theories of Diffusion A central theme throughout the workshop was how to identify the relative roles of diffusion and structural change in fertility transition. Diffusion explanations or models, on the other hand, attempt to identify a cascading mechanism that leads to cumulative adoption of behaviors by some individuals, even while their social position or the resources associated with them change only trivially or remain unaltered. Adopting the new behavior occurs as a result of reevaluation of one's own choices in light of other people's behavior, not as a strategic response or accommodation to a realignment of resources associated with one's social position in the social system. Many researchers argue that the fertility transition can be attributed to both structural change and diffusion. For example, if what is being diffused is information about family planning or new ideas and values about its use, then what Cleland referred to as a pure theory of diffusion may be plausible.