The setting of targets has often been criticised by women's rights advocates arguing that it promotes a coercive attitude towards women, who are viewed as targets for meeting administratively mandated counts of contraceptive acceptors rather than as individuals in need of health and FP services.
This variation amongst gender and age groups in terms of attitudes to coercive measures has been observed elsewhere [ 10].
Few researchers had paid attention to confounding factors: The influence of the time elapsing between coercion and interview; adaptation to coercive methods; expected responses; researchers' attitudes when explaining results and making conclusions [ 9, 39] or the relationship between the researcher (interviewer) and participants [ 38, 15].
This study is conducted at outpatient settings by independent researchers, avoiding thus bias and allowing patients to express freely their attitudes towards hospitalization and coercive treatment.
It is not yet clear, whether and how mental health professionals' attitudes influence their practice of coercive treatment.
By contrast, Yealland's attitude to the ethics of coercive treatments was one-dimensional: 'the only merits that can be assigned to such methods of treatment are to be found in the result (Yealland, 1918, p. 57).
An improved understanding of links between nurses' exposure to aggression, attitudes to, and actual involvement in, coercive measures, and their emotions (anger, guilt, fear, fatigue, sadness), could inform preparation and education for prevention and management of violence.
Issues such as patients' attitudes towards the pre-conditions of coercive psychiatric treatment and their proposals for best clinical practice are also addressed.
To obtain information which can help clinicians to apply the proportionality and subsidiarity principles, it is not just attitudes that should be compared, but coercive interventions.
