| Bleeding pattern | Definition |
| Bleeding | - Any bloody vaginal discharge that requires the use of such protection as pads or tampons
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| Spotting | - Any bloody vaginal discharge that is not large enough to require sanitary protection
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| Bleeding/spotting episode | - One or more consecutive days on which bleeding or spotting has been entered on the diary card
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| Bleeding/spotting-free interval | - One or more consecutive days on which no bleeding or spotting has been entered on the diary card
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| Bleeding/spotting segment | - One bleeding/spotting episode and the immediately following bleeding/spotting-free interval
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| Reference period | - The number of consecutive days upon which the analysis is based (usually taken as 90 days for women using long-acting hormonal systems, and 28 or 30 days for women using once-a-month systems, including combined oral contraception)
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| Different types of analysis, which can be undertaken on bleeding patterns within a reference period | - Number of bleeding/spotting days
- Number of bleeding/spotting episodes
- Mean, range of lengths of bleeding/spotting episodes (or medians and centiles for box-whisker plot analysis)
- Mean, range (medians and centiles) of lengths of bleeding/spotting-free intervals
- Number of spotting days and spotting-only episodes
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