Determinants of contraceptive use: a comparison of Central and Coast Provinces in Kenya

Abstract

This study sought to examine comparatively the determinants of current contraceptive use in Central and Coast provinces. The two were chosen based on their contraceptive prevalence rates where Central province had the highest while Coast had the lowest. The data source was the 1998 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS). The sample consisted of married, non-pregnant, fecund women who were aged between 15-49 years at the time of the survey. The sample for Coast was 601 women while for Central was 405 women. Frequency distributions were the first level of analysis that gave the general characteristics of the sample by both the dependent and independent variables. At the bivariate level, crosstabulations and the chi-square statistic were used as measures of association and statistical significance. Significance was set at a = .05 Logistic regression was finally used to examine the determinants of contraceptive use where by a model was fitted for each region. The findings of the frequency distributions show higher proportions of Central respondents within variable categories associated with greater probabilities of contraceptive use compared to distribution in Coast. Bivariate findings show that more independent variables are statistically associated with the dependent variable in Coast than in Central At the multivariate level, three determinants emerge significant in both regions, these are; the number of surviving children, respondent's level of education and spousal approval. Desire for more children and reliance on radio as a source of family planning information, are