Date of Award

12-2020

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

MS in Epidemiology & Biostatistics

First Advisor

Dr Masood Kadir

Second Advisor

Mr Iqbal Azam

Third Advisor

Dr Sarah Saleem

Department

Community Health Sciences

Abstract

Background: Women of reproductive age would often delay or prefer not getting pregnant due to various reasons. These reasons include the intention the have space between consecutive pregnancies, recurrent miscarriages due to health issues and intention to limit pregnancies. If these women are unable to access and use appropriate family planning and contraceptive resources as per their need, in that case, they are considered to be having an unmet need for family planning. In 2012, Pakistan had 21% of unmet family planning need in women of reproductive age. These estimates were associated with various factors such as husband's education, women's education level, socio-economic status, choice of contraceptive method and compliance to its use. Another significant factor associated with unmet family planning need was gender-based violence or intimate partner violence. Several studies in Pakistan have highlighted that the prevalence of psychological intimate partner violence among women of reproductive age falls between 43% and 97%. Furthermore, almost one-third of women in Pakistan have gone through physical intimate partner violence at least once in their lifetime. The present study aids in establishing an association between them based on countrywide representative data from the Pakistan Demographic Health Survey 2017 – 2018. This study assessed the association between intimate partner violence and unmet family planning need in currently married women of reproductive age (15 – 49 years) in Pakistan. It also aids in determining factors associated with unmet family planning need in currently married women of reproductive age (15 – 49 years) in Pakistan.
Methodology The data for this study was taken from Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey 2017 – 2018. PDHS 2017 -18 was conducted with ever-married females of reproductive age (15 – 49 years) in Pakistan's urban and Page | 7 rural areas. The Demographic and Health Survey is famous for addressing sensitive issues and concerns in its countrywide surveys, such as contraceptive need, fertility preferences and gender-based violence. For domestic violence, PDHS employed a survey with specific definitions regarding spousal violence, which can also be renamed intimate partner violence. The data for this study was extracted from the data file of the women's questionnaire. This questionnaire was implemented on women of reproductive age (15 – 49 years) in Pakistan. Population, which specifically participated in the survey's domestic violence module, was selected from this data, excluding those who were infecund or menopausal. After the data extraction, useful and relevant variables were shortlisted for this study, such as socio-demographic factors, factors related to the respondent's reproductive health, decision making, and informed choices. These variables were then merged and explored further for associations with unmet need for family planning by applying the Cox proportional hazard model in complex survey designs.
Results The total number of study participants at the end of the analysis were 3246. This weighted analysis was included 558 clusters and 16 strata within each cluster. Significant associations were observed between the unmet need for family planning and ever use of contraception (p-value = < 0.001). Two-way interaction was significant between intimate partner violence and knowledge of ovulatory cycle (p-value = 0.08).
Conclusion This study has concluded that women who have gone through intimate partner violence are more likely to have unmet family planning needs than women who have not gone through intimate partner violence.

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1

Last Page

88

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