Unmet need for contraception is a widely used but frequently misunderstoodindicator. Although calculated from measures of pregnancy intention and cur-rent contraceptive use, unmet need is commonly used as a proxy measure for() lack of access to contraception and () desire to use it. Using data from a sur-vey in Burkina Faso, we examine the extent to which unmet need correspondswith and diverges from these two concepts, calculating sensitivity, specificity,and positive/negative predictive values. Among women assigned conventionalunmet need,  percent report no desire to use contraception and  percentreport access to a broad range of affordable contraceptives. Results show unmetneed has low sensitivity and specificity in differentiating those who lack accessand/or who desire to use a method from those who do not. These findings sug-gest that unmet need is of limited utility to inform family planning programsand may be leading stakeholders to overestimate the proportion of women inneed of expanded family planning services. We conclude that more direct mea-sures are feasible at the population level, rendering the proxy measure of unmetneed unnecessary. Where access to and/or desire for contraception are the trueoutcomes of interest, more direct measures should be used.