Impact of Health Literacy on Contraceptive Knowledge, Attitude and Use among the Nigerian Adult Population

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Adult Education, University of Ibadan.

2 Department of Continuing Education and Developmental Studies

3 Department of Adult Education, University of Ibadan

Abstract

Background and Objectives: Many studies have explored associated and determining factors regarding contraceptive prevalence and use as well as the disparities in contraceptive use based on different regions in Nigeria but none has made effort to establish the influence of health literacy on contraceptive knowledge, attitude and use. This study, therefore, attempted to examine the impact of health literacy on Nigerian adults’ contraceptive knowledge, attitude and use. 

Material and Methods: The study adopted a descriptive cross-sectional research design and the population of the study consisted of Nigerians who are 18 years and above and reside in any part of the country.  A non-probability sampling technique was adopted and a questionnaire was the main instrument of data collection for this study. A total of 426 participants participated in the study. Frequency count, simple percentages, mean, standard deviation, T-test, one-way ANOVA, regression and correlational analysis were used to analyse the data generated from the study.

Results: The study indicated that 90.6% of the Nigerian adult population has adequate health literacy, and 53.8% of them have poor contraceptive knowledge. Similarly, 65.7% of the participants have positive attitudes towards contraception while 58.2% of the participants’ contraceptive use is high. Further, health literacy was shown to have a significant but weak positive impact on contraceptive knowledge (r = 0.345, p<0.001), attitudes toward contraception (r = 0.362, p<0.001), and contraceptive use (r = 0.218, p<0.001).

Conclusion: The study’s results imply that many other factors aside from health literacy affect people’s contraceptive knowledge, attitude and use. Hence, addressing the health literacy of adult Nigerians is only one aspect of improving contraceptive knowledge, attitude and use.

Keywords


Availability of data and materials: Data will be available upon request from the corresponding author

Conflict of Interest: The authors have no conflicting interest in the current study

Ethical consideration: Informed consent from the participants was obtained and they were assured of the confidentiality of the information provided before participating in the study

Funding: No financial support was received for the conduct of this study

Authors' contributions: Sunday Itasanmi: Conceived, collected data, analyse and prepared the manuscript. Helen Andong: collected and analyse data, review the manscript. Omobola Adelore: Supervised, review and edited the manuscript

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