The weaknesses of using couple years protection (CYP) for assessing the effectiveness of various measures of family planning are discussed. Limitations had been recognized in the past but have been largely ignored in the present context. This has been due to the unavailability of local data, and other standardizations have been too cumbersome for practical use. The advantage of using CYP is that it allows for easy calculation of a level of contraceptive use without differentiation by method. This measure reflects to some extent, for instance, access to family planning services, and prevention of unwanted fertility. It also measures output, and provides program managers with a tool to adjust supply to demand. The weakness are categorized in terms of contraceptive failure rates, sporadic and infrequent use with secondary partners, wastage, substitution, differences in fecundity, local specificity, lack of a discount for time, ability to reach high priority or underserved clients, secondary effects, quality of care, and so on. These weaknesses broadly effect the relationship of CYP with fertility; it is possible that adjustments can be made to improve the measure. The deficiencies in accounting for hard to reach clients, in measuring the secondary effects in AIDs and STD prevention, and in measuring satisfaction and continuation or other facets of quality of care not be accounted for in CYP. This suggests that a comprehensive assessment must utilize a variety of indicators, such as a direct measure of contraceptive prevalence, the proportion of children born to high risk women, continuation rates, and qualitative measures of the impact of care. Improvement of CYP is suggested as an inexpensive solution. Local data should be used, since the average age at sterilization in a particular population impacts greatly on the actual CYP provided by sterilization in a specific program. Cookbook conversion factors should be revised so that condoms (100 per CYP) credit is reduced and IUDs (2.5 CYP per IUD) is increased; CYP factors need to be developed for Norplant and Lactational Amenorrhea Method (LAM). An effort by the AID Cooperating Agency Task Force on Performance Indicators is underway to address these issues, but in the meantime awareness of the issues is advised.