Knowledge, Attitude and Male Involvement in Family Planning as Predictors to Contraceptive use in Kalabari Communities in Rivers State, Nigeria

This study focused on Knowledge, Attitude and Male involvement in family planning as predictors to contraceptive use in Kalabari communities of Rivers State. The descriptive cross-sectional survey design was adopted for the study. A 2-staged sampling technique was used to select four hundred and forty participants. Data was collected using a semi-structured questionnaire with a reliability coefficient of 0.70. Analysis was done using simple percentage, mean and standard deviation, and binary logistic regression. The finding of this study showed that overall 48.6% are knowledgeable about contraceptives while more than half (51.1%) were not knowledgeable; majority (92.7%) had positive attitude towards contraceptive use while 7.3% had negative attitude towards contraceptive use; and 2.2% were highly involved in family planning while 97.8% had low involvement. The finding of this study on contraceptive utilization showed that 68.6% have ever used contraceptive while 61.2% currently use contraceptives and methods currently used include daily pills (35.2%), condom (22.5%), withdrawal (16.5%), postinor (13.1%), diaphragm (4.7%), implants (4.5%) and injectable (3.2%). The tested hypotheses showed a significant relationship between knowledge of family planning and the use of contraceptives and respondents who had knowledge were 2.63 times less likely to use contraceptive compared to those who were not knowledgeable (OR=0.38, 95%CI: 0.24-0.61). A significant relationship was also found between male involvement in family planning and the use of contraceptives and those who were involved in family planning were 1.98 times less likely to use contraceptive compared to those who were not involved (OR=0.505, 95%CI: 0.000). However, attitude towards family planning was not found to be significantly related to contraceptive use ( = 3.11, df = 1, p-value = 0.076). It was concluded that knowledge of contraceptives was not universal, male involvement in family planning is very low and the attitude individuals have in most cases does not translate to practice. There is therefore the need for public health practitioners and other Non-governmental Organizations to sustain efforts to raise awareness and motivation for proper contraceptive use.