Contraceptive awareness among men in Bangladesh.
OBJECTIVE
A considerable gap exists between contraceptive awareness and use. Traditional approaches to measuring awareness are inadequate to properly understand the linkages between awareness and use. The objective of this study was to examine the degree of men's modern contraceptive awareness in Bangladesh and the associated determinants and further testing of a hypothesis that current contraceptive use confers a high degree of method awareness.


METHODS
This study used the couple data set from the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (1999-2000). A two-level, multinomial logistic regression was used with the degree of contraceptive awareness as the dependent variable. The degree of awareness was measured by the reported number of modern contraceptive methods known among men aged 15-59 years. Men's responses on method awareness were classified according to those reported spontaneously and probed.


RESULTS
Nearly 100% of the study participants reported having heard of at least one method and about half reported awareness of at least eight different methods of contraception. Multinomial logistic regression analyses showed that older and educated men were more likely to have reported a high degree of awareness. The findings confirmed our hypothesis that current contraceptive use is likely to confer a high degree of modern method awareness among men (p<0.001), after controlling for other important characteristics.


CONCLUSIONS
Men who had a low degree of contraceptive awareness seem not properly informed of the wide range of contraceptive options. It is imperative that family planning intervention strategies in Bangladesh should focus on the degree and functional knowledge of contraceptive methods to improve the uptake of especially male-based modern methods.
Islam
Mohammad Amirul
MA
Division of Social Statistics, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK. islam@soton.ac.uk
Padmadas
Sabu S
SS
Smith
Peter W F
PW
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001364:Awareness; D001459:Bangladesh; D003267:Contraception / Q000379:methods* / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005193:Family Planning Services / Q000193:education*; D019538:Health Care Surveys; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010342:Patient Acceptance of Health Care