Objective: The first objective is to find out the factor associated with unwanted pregnancies and the second is to validate the developed model using bootstrapping techniques to get the biased corrected estimates.

Methods: Data of pregnant women have been extracted from second round of National Family Health Survey (1998–1999), India. The hierarchical structures of data comprising women (at lower level) nested within state (at higher level). Multilevel logistic regression analysis was carried out to achieve first objective and for the second objective, bootstrapping technique is used.

Results: Multilevel logistic regression analysis revealed that age, educational status, number of surviving sons, interval from last live birth to index pregnancy, ever contraceptive use, ever physically mistreated by husband were significant factors associated with unwanted pregnancies at individual level. Only 8 percent of the variability in unwanted pregnancy could not be explained by the considered set of covariates. Also, for this model the state level variance was not significantly different from zero.

Conclusion: Effective use of contraceptive method may decrease the prevalence of unwanted pregnancies