Factors of consistent contraceptive use in Uganda: A case study of the 2006 demographic and health survey data

Abstract

The general objective of the study was to understand the contraceptive use behaviour of individuals who reported ever use of contraceptives. Specifically, it set out to establish factors associated with consistent contraceptive use in Uganda, explore the relative importance of the different factors found associated with consistent use of contraceptives and propose ways in which contraceptive use in the country can be improved.

Using the Statistical Package for Social Scientists, 3,674 cases of respondents in the age range 15-49 years who reported ever-use of contraceptives were extracted from the 2006 Uganda Demographic and Health Survey (UDHS). Analysis of these found significant relationships between consistent contraceptive use and demographic, socio-economic, social, health seeking behavior and user situational context characteristics.

The Demographic characteristics that showed a significant relationship with consistent contraceptive use were children ever born, number of living children, children at first use, age of first use, age at first sexual intercourse and Ideal number of children. The social factors that showed the association were marital status and number of unions while the user situational context included partner’s education, partner’s occupation and partner’s age.

It was further showed that users in the age range 15-34 were less likely to be consistent contraceptive users compared to their counterparts in the age range 35-49 and users in the central region were more likely to remain consistent compared to those in the western region and users in the Northern region were more likely to be consistent compared to those in the Eastern region.

On the whole rural contraceptive users were found less likely to remain consistent compared to the urban dwelling users and users who watch television at least once a week were found more likely to be consistent at contraceptive use.

Compared to respondents without living children, the more children a user has, the more consistent they are get a contraceptive use. It was also found that Compared to users who never married at all, users who were currently married were more likely to remain consistent and those who were formerly married were 59% less likely to remain consistent contraceptive users.

The study recommended that Reproductive Health programmes planning should take into consideration the different characteristics that have association to consistence contraceptive use and that for impact maximization there is need to focus on users in the rural.