Determinants of contraceptive use: a comparison of Central and Coast Provinces in Kenya
Abstract
This study sought to examine comparatively the determinants of current contraceptive use in
Central and Coast provinces. The two were chosen based on their contraceptive prevalence
rates where Central province had the highest while Coast had the lowest.
The data source was the 1998 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS). The sample
consisted of married, non-pregnant, fecund women who were aged between 15-49 years at
the time of the survey. The sample for Coast was 601 women while for Central was 405
women.
Frequency distributions were the first level of analysis that gave the general characteristics of
the sample by both the dependent and independent variables. At the bivariate level, crosstabulations
and the chi-square statistic were used as measures of association and statistical
significance. Significance was set at a = .05 Logistic regression was finally used to examine
the determinants of contraceptive use where by a model was fitted for each region.
The findings of the frequency distributions show higher proportions of Central respondents
within variable categories associated with greater probabilities of contraceptive use compared
to distribution in Coast. Bivariate findings show that more independent variables are
statistically associated with the dependent variable in Coast than in Central At the
multivariate level, three determinants emerge significant in both regions, these are; the
number of surviving children, respondent's level of education and spousal approval. Desire
for more children and reliance on radio as a source of family planning information, are
Citation
A project presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree in master of arts in population studies, niversity of NairobiPublisher
Department of Population Studies & Research Institute, University of Nairobi