"While not achieving the first IVF birth, Australia has nonetheless played a significant role in the development and wide acceptance of IVF. This research examines IVF success rates disclosed on IVF clinic websites from 2016 to 2022. IVF success rates were first calculated in 1981 as a way of monitoring the outcomes of treatments, partially due to scepticism of ‘test tube’ babies. As the IVF industry developed scientifically and organisationally and become more about the provision of service, they continue to use success rates to monitor and evaluate the efficacy and efficient of treatment protocol. In 2016, IVF success rate came to the attention of the news media and the government regulators, creating a situation calling into question the legitimacy of the IVF industry when accusations of selective reporting came to light.

We use content analysis to review the IVF success rates of 31 Australian IVF clinics for a six-year period. We report on ten items of analysis including whether the clinics chose to report or not, the numerator and denominator used to calculate the success rate (whether they are specified at all), the population used to calculate the success rate, segmentation of the population, time period, whether a graph or other visual aid was used to express the success rate, and others.

We find that there is much variability in the defintion of IVF success. Clinics have significant discretion how they report their IVF success rates, about a quarter of the clinics chose to not report their success rates. There was significant variability in the numerators and denominators used to calculate success. The practice of using medical terminology allowed IVF clinics to use calculative practices of selectively choosing which part of the IVF cycle to measure as IVF is a long process with numerous possibilities of failure along the road to success. Measuring only the most favourable part of the cycle provides users with unrealistic expectations about their chances of success. Many clinics used outdated data. Almost no clinics provided information related to the sample."