| dc.description.abstract | Introduction:
The age-group of 15 to 19 years is a period when most people actively engage in exploring their sexual potential. Sexually active unmarried adolescent youths are not seeking to become pregnant and married adolescents do not wish to become pregnant at a young age or, if they have already had a child, they wish to delay a second pregnancy (Cleland et al., 2006). Despite those research facts, contraceptive prevalence rate in Sub Saharan Africa generally remains low at only 21 percent and adolescent girls present an age group with the lowest contraceptive prevalence rate in the region. Besides there is little information on the factors that influence the use of contraceptives among out of school youths, which now stands at 35.3% (UDHS, 2011). Tororo district has a higher population growth and ranked one of the most populated districts in far eastern with 526,378 individuals (UBOS, 2014), the region is 3rd lowest in contraceptive usage out of four at 23.4 % for modern contraception (UDHS, 2011, page 11, table 5).
Objective:
General Objective of the study was to assess the factors which influence the usage of modern contraceptives among out of school youths (15-19 years) in rural communities of Tororo district.
Methodology:
A descriptive cross sectional study was performed in 2015 in Tororo district, Uganda. Quantitative and qualitative study methods were used involving surveys, in-depths interviews and focus group discussions with youths so as to collect detailed views from the research participants. The study model size was 351 youths from the selected villages of the two study parishes in each of the four selected sub counties and was determined. Data was collected by the use questionnaire and focus group discussion guide. Since the study was mainly descriptive, frequency distribution tables and graphs were the major form of presentation and analysis for the study.
Results:
The study revealed that 90.1% of the youths had knowledge of what contraceptives are and most youths obtained such knowledge from mass media, having heard of contraceptives was thrice more likely to delay pregnancy occurrence as compared to those individuals who heard no information on contraceptive or family planning. Knowing a method or methods of contraception increases the likelihood of delay of pregnancy by 1.376 times. Youths know about contraceptives as methods of mostly preventing pregnancy and only 38.5% reported them as method for prevention of sexually transmitted diseases. The more educated the youths, the chances of utilizing contraception increases. elevated attitude increases chances of using contraceptives by about 1.5 times but Perceived side effects of utilizing contraceptives greatly affects youths contraception uptake by 2.3 times lower. Most of the youth are peasants or involved in unskilled work and majority would be influenced by their peers on the use of family planning services, 72.1% of the respondents have their partners supporting use of contraceptives but only 30.5% of the respondents agreed that they discuss family planning methods with their partners.
Recommendation:
Disseminating information on sexual health through mass media would be a possible means to avail information to youths. Also sexual health education by trained peer educators can be an effective method of improving the knowledge of young people on the issues of sexual and reproductive health, youths‘ attitudes should be addressed including side effects and myths about contraceptives in contraceptive service delivery programs. Affordable contraceptive methods should be provided at community levels or by government subsidization. Community peer sex education must be undertaken so as to engage as many youths as possible in order to influence others to uptake contraception. Partner communications are crucial towards common decision making. | en_US |
