Correlates and determinants of husband-wife communication about family planning.

Abstract

This thesis examines the correlates and determinants of husband-wife communication about family planning by currently married women aged 15-49 years in Igunga (Maragoli), Sabatia Division, Kakamega District. One of the major factors that has hindered the success of family planning use not only in the district but in the country as a whole has been lack of sufficient impetus on the part of family planning programmes to stimulate and enhance communication bet.ween and among spouses. This study carried in Igunga aimed at establishing how various demographic, socio-economic and cultural factors affect inter-spousal communication and consequently family planning use. The major statistical techniques used in data analysis in the study are cross-tabulation and multiple regression analysis. The cross-tabulation analysis showed that age, duration of marriage, the number of surviving children, woman's freedom of expression, woman's level of education, woman's knowledge of contraceptives, decision-making authority and the husband attitude towards use of family planning affect husband-wife communication about family planning. Multiple regression analysis revealed that only four independent variables are statistically significant in explaining husband-wife communication about family planning and they accounted for 47.1 percent variance in the communication process. These variables are husband attitude towards use of family planning, woman freedom of expression, woman's level of education and woman's knowledge of contraceptives. Among the four significant variables, husbands attitude towards family planning is the most important one and has the greatest. explanatory power, accounting for 34.4 percent of the variation in communication between spouses. Wife freedom of expression explained 5.1 percent of the variation, wife ea knowledge of contraceptives 4.7 percent and wife level of education 2.9 percent. All the variables are positively related to the communication process in family planning with correlation coefficients of r=0.587 for husbands attitude towards family planning use, r=0.226 for wife's freedom of expression, r=O.218 for wife's knowledge of contraceptives and 1'=0.171 for the wife's level of education. The other independent variables namely; the decision-making authority, the number of surviving children and the duration of marriage are not statistically significant in explaining inter-spousal communication about family planning. Thus, the regression results have therefore confirmed four of the ten stated hypotheses and all of them are positively related to the communication process in family planning. The study concludes that family planning programmes should pay more attention to activities geared towards stimulating and promoting husband wife communication about family planning by influencing husbandmen attitude towards family planning and improvement of characteristics of women which facilitate husband-wife communication about family planning such as education and freedom of expression .