Knowledge, attitude, and practice of Family Planning among women of selected institutions of Peshawar

Abstract

Introduction: There is a significant absence of qualitative and quantitative data in the literature about knowledge, attitude and practices of Family Planning among married women of Peshawar. There is a need to fill the gap in knowledge and to obtain relevant data that will provide necessary improvements.

Objective: To evaluate knowledge, attitude, and practice of Family Planning among females attending the Outpatients clinics of selected institutions of Peshawar.

Materials & Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was carried out in outpatient Department of Lady Reading Hospital (LRH), Peshawar, from September 2005 to December 2005. All married women having at least one child were included through convenience sampling. A structured questionnaire about knowledge, attitude, and practice of Family Planning was used to collect data by direct interview in local languages after informed consent. Data were analyzed for descriptive statistics by MS Excel.

Results: Awareness regarding different aspects of Family Planning was about 95%, requisite attitude towards Family Planning was about 81%, while practice of Family Planning was 58%.

Conclusion: Married women sampled in this study had adequate knowledge and positive attitude about Family Planning but they were lacking in practice.