Determinants of Family Planning Use in Jordan: Measuring the Effect of a National Communication Campaign

Jordan's Total Fertility Rate (TFR) has declined significantly since the mid-1970s, when it was 7.4 children per woman. However, more recent data indicate that TFR has remained nearly unchanged at 3.4 since 2002, and that contraceptive prevalence is still only 57% among currently married women of reproductive age. The present research aims to identify those social, behavioral, and environmental factors that are most predictive of a woman's decision to use Family Planning (FP). This research draws on data from the nationally representative Jordan Health Communication Partnership Midterm Survey, which collected information on demographics, exposure to communication about FP, and resulting changes in FP behaviors. Among 1,405 ever-married women, 423 (30%) were exposed to campaign messages. Of these, 14% began to use modern contraceptives, 19% planned to use modern contraceptives, and 38% discussed proper birth spacing as a result of this exposure. We constructed propensity scores using those covariates shown in the literature to be most highly associated with FP behaviors and exposure to communication campaigns, including age, parity, education level, media habits, urban/rural residence, and injunctive and descriptive norms. Three approaches to propensity scores will be used: nearest neighbor 1:1 matching, Mahalanobis metric matching, and full matching. We will then compare these models for evaluating the effect of the communication campaign on FP behaviors. The results of these analyses will provide information on the factors most related to FP use among Jordanian women, and will be used to inform the design of future communication campaigns and family planning messages.