Survey results show significant changes in family planning attitudes and behavior over the 6-month period studied. The proportion of respondents holding highly favorable attitudes toward family planning increased from 62 percent at the baseline survey to 70 percent at the follow-up survey. The greatest improvements were made regarding male responsibility for family planning and the positive impact of family planning on marital relationships. At the same time, there was an increase in the proportion of respondents who approved of family planning, who would recommend family planning to someone else, and who believed that their spouses and best friends would approve of their using family planning. The analysis controlled for many potential confounding factors, including education, age, gender, religion, parity, and ownership of a radio or television set.
Results show that campaign exposure was positively associated with all three outcomes.
Respondents with the highest campaign exposure were about four times as likely as their unexposed counterparts to hold favorable family planning attitudes and to have discussed family planning with their spouses in recent months. High campaign exposure was associated with a twofold increase in current contraceptive use, while moderate exposure was not associated with any increase. This suggests that intense campaign exposure, may be necessary to change behavior, but moderate exposure may be sufficient to change attitudes and stimulate discussion. In other words, while a big communication campaign will have a big impact on behavior, a small campaign may have impact primarily at the intermediate stages in the process of behavior change.