Modelling of traditional family planning usage by women in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Family planning plays a crucial role in enhancing the health of the mother and the child. Contraceptives are used by most women in the reproductive age span (15- 49 years). Sri Lanka has named as one of the countries with high usage of traditional family planning (TFP) methods than the other Asian countries. However, the reasons for that were not been investigated. Therefore, this study is carried out to identify the significant factors influencing on usage of traditional family planning by using data from Sri Lanka Demographic and Health Survey in 2016 and the sample size is 10835. The modern family planning methods are used by 83.7% women compared to the traditional family planning methods. Among the traditional family planning users, rhythm method is more popular (57.1%) than the withdrawal method (34.9%). The highest percentage of both the traditional and modern family planning methods are used by the women of age between 31- 42 years. A binary logistic regression model was developed to capture the factors which influence on the use of traditional family planning methods. The model was invariant on the type of selection method and selection criteria. The overall predictive power is 82.9%. The knowledge on family planning, having advice from public health midwives, attendance to well women clinics, religion, ethnicity, decision to use Family Planning, husband's occupation, women's age, women's occupation, women's education level, number of children, and wealth quantile are significantly associated factors with the usage of traditional family planning. The odds of the usage of TFP among the women having no children and women having 1 or 2 children are respectively 1.4 and 4.0 times higher than the women having 3 or more children. The factors identified are geared towards providing a contemporary, robust evidence base, therefore the key population groups in need of contraceptive services can be targeted more effectively and efficiently. Organizing counselling programmes and promotions on family planning and conduct media awareness programmes to avoid some myths on modern contraceptives can be suggested