FAMILY PLANNING BEHAVIOR OF ARAB-AMERICAN WOMEN.
Contributors: University of California, San Francisco.
Published: 1987
Number of pages: 298
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: A descriptive, correlational study of 60 Arab-American women had as its purposes: (1) to describe their family planning behavior, (2) to test the utility of a modified Health Belief Model in explaining their family planning behavior, and (3) to identify the best predictors of their family planning behavior.

The conceptual framework of this study was based on Rosenstock's Health Belief Model (HBM). Education, employment, sex-role orientation, and ethnic identity were four factors added to the original HBM in order to achieve the purposes of this study. Based on the modified HBM, eight research questions and five hypotheses were formulated. Data were collected through structured personal interviews using four questionnaires.

Arab-American women in this study had an average of 2.1 children. The majority (60%) started to use birth control measures after having the first child. The oral contraceptive pill was the birth control method of choice among this population (60%), followed by abstinence (26%).

The majority of women (88%) perceived themselves to be effective in planning their families. Women who perceived themselves as least susceptible to pregnancy were those using birth control, and women who perceived themselves as most susceptible to pregnancy were those who wanted to get pregnant. A statistically significant inverse relationship was found between subjects' perception of susceptibility to pregnancy and use of birth control for women with no male children (Kendall's Tau = .69; p = .0167).

Results support the hypothesis that there is a positive relationship between education and effectiveness in family planning (Kendall's Tau = .43; p = .0001). Results also support the hypothesis that women who perceive themselves in nontraditional sex roles are more effective in planning their families than women who perceive themselves in traditional roles (Kendall's Tau = .29; p = .03). Similarly, women who had a nontraditional self-concept were more effective in planning their families than women who had a traditional self-concept (Kendall's Tau = .32; p = .01).

Education, sex-role orientation, number of male children, and self-concept explained 41 percent of the variance in effectiveness of family planning behavior of Arab-American women.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 48-03, Section: B, page: 0703.

Thesis (D.N.S.)--UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO, 1987.

School code: 0034.