Socio-Demographic Factors, Family Planning Information, Household Decision Making And Contraceptive Use In North Eastern Nigeria

ABSTRACT

Most of the world population growth is from developing countries and Nigeria is a major

player in this, with a total fertility rate (TFR) of 5.5 and very low modern contraceptive

use of 15%. This study, therefore, examines the relationships between socio-demographic

factors, exposure to family planning information and household decision making and

contraceptive use among married women in the North-East region of Nigeria. Out of a

total of 38,948 women data set, this study extracted and used 5309 sample size for

women aged 15-49 in the North-East region from the 2013 Nigeria Demographic and

Health Survey (NDHS) and analyzed at three levels; univariate (frequency distribution),

bivariate (Chi-square) and multivariate (binary logistic regression) using SPSS

version20.0 . This study distinguished between direct and indirect effects of explanatory

factors to contraceptive use at 0.05, 0.01 and 0.001 significant level. The major factors

considered in this study to influence contraceptive use are state of residence, education,

religion, wealth status, number of living children, Number of co-wives, husbands

education, exposure to family planning information and household decision making ,

However the findings of this study revealed that only state of residence, wealth status,

number of living children and family planning information from health facilities had

direct relationships with contraceptive use in the North Eastern region . The study

recommend that policy and program intervention to increase uptake of contraceptive in

the region will have to be state specific to maximize results, and within the states,

program intervention will need to customize activities according to wealth status

ensuring that the poor and poorest sub-groups are given adequate information for

informed choice and decision to use contraceptives in the North-East region of

Nigeria .With respect to exposure to family planning information, and considering the

fact that majority of the women (68.4%) and their husbands (58%), had no formal

education , the most viable programming strategies will be to provide more easy access to health facility-based information to elicit increased contraceptive use in the long-run.