Factors Influencing Use of Traditional Family Planning 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 a high usage of traditional family planning (TFP) methods than 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 TFP by using data from Sri Lanka Demographic and Health Survey in 2016 with a sample size of 10835. A binary logistic regression model was developed to capture the factors influencing on the use of TFP. The model was invariant on the type of selection method and the selection criteria. The overall predictive power is 82.9%. The percentages of women using TFP is 16.3%. Among TFP users, withdrawal and rhythm method are 35% and 57% respectively. 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 TFP. 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 robust evidence based on data driven decision making (DDDM) and 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 conducting media awareness programmes to avoid some myths on modern contraceptives can be suggested.