Attitude and Perception of Family Planning Among Rural Couples in Rural Parts of Nigeria: A Study of Danmusa Local Government Area of Katsina State, Nigeria

Abstract

The main goal of the study was to investigate the people's knowledge, attitude and perception towards family planning practices in Danmusa local government area of Katsina state. The study was therefore built around the following specific objectives as thus; To assess the level of awareness on family planning among couples in Danmusa local government area, to find out the types and nature of family planning practices in Danmusa local government area, to identify the perception of couples towards family planning Danmusa local government area, to identify the factors or challenges that influence couples perception of family planning in Danmusa Local Government area and to find out ways to encourage positive attitude towards family planning. The study utilized both primary and secondary data. A cluster and random sampling techniques were used to sample the opinion of 305 respondents across the 11 districts of Dan Musa local government. Both secondary and primary data were used for analyses and the analyses were done quantitatively and qualitatively. The data were presented in frequency distribution table and some of the variables that provided more insight with regards to realising the objectives of the study were cross tabulated to give further clarity and depth to the connection between the variables. The study found out that the level of awareness of family planning in Danmusa local government is high, but the people prefer traditional methods. The study also discovered that, the couples' skepticism towards modern family planning is influenced by religion and level of education. In other words, religion, gender and level of education were discovered to be major factors that determine couples' attitude, knowledge and perception towards family planning in Dan Musa local government area. The study therefore recommends that education needs to be intensified among the rural people to illicit positive attitude towards family planning from them, and that intensive campaigns and awareness need to be embark upon by government and non-governmental agencies. Also training of health workers and improvement on the old family planning techniques need to be done to make them safer, cheaper, effective and easily accessible.