Abstract:
Background: Having more children in the past was a form of assurance to couples on the grounds
of having more working hands to help till the land and cultivate crops. However, with the advent of
modern farming technologies, pressure on social amenities, scarce resources, high dependency
ratio, lack of employable opportunities and high incidence of poverty, a lot of people are trying to
limit the number of children they give birth to by averting to the use of contraceptives.
Objective: The aim of this study is to determine factors affecting contraceptive use among
reproductive aged women in the Worawora township of the Volta Region of Ghana.
Methods: A cross sectional survey using quantitative method was employed. A total of 390 women
were conveniently sampled and questionnaires were administered to obtain the needed data.
Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were deployed to understand the data.
Findings: Majority of the respondents were within the 15-24 age group and also predominantly
Christians. The findings identified significant association between the use of contraceptives and age, number of children, number of members per household, occupation, marital status,
educational level of partner and having a prior discussing with the sexual partner. Respondents in
the age group 35-40 yrs were slightly over four times (OR: 4.33) more likely to use contraceptives
compared to the younger aged women, after controlling for other covariates in the predictive model.
There was a very progressive likelihood for a woman using contraceptive as the educational level
of the partner increase. For instance, women whose partners have attained a tertiary level
education were about seven (7) times more likely to use a form of contraceptive compared to those
without any formal education. However, the respondent’s marital status and occupation at the time
of the study were found to have no statistical significant effect on predicting contraceptive use.
Conclusion: Women in their late thirties and those who indicated discussing the use of
contraceptive with their sexual partners have higher tendency of usage. It was noted that partners’
involvement and educational background has high impact on women’s use of contraceptive. Policy
decision should be driven to target those outside these age groups and demographic
characteristics as measure to encourage usage.
