Abstract:
The objectives of This research are to study the characteristics and the information of women coming to receive family planning services at the public health centres in Bangkok Metropolis, and to analyse the factors affecting the duration of the continued use of contraceptive methods by using IUD and taking oral pills. The data used in this study has been obtained from the research data of the Contraceptive Continuation Rates and Use-effectiveness in Bangkok metropolis: 1975, Institute for Population and Social Research, Mahidol University. Data has also been used from that provided from the patient information cards (family planning 01) and from interviewing women (from 1/1/71-30/3/75) who had already received services from 14 public health centres in Bangkok Metropolis. The data has been analysed by using Percentage, One Way Analysis of Variance and Multiple Classification Analysis. The research has found that most of women who come to receive services are Buddhist, have elementary education, have never applied for services from any other centres, have an age of not more than 34 years are married and have lived together with their present husband for more than 5 years, have as an average 3 children, have a family income of not less than Baht 1,500 per month, live not more than 2 km from public health centres which includes a travel time of less than 15 minutes. The women receiving the contraceptive services have learned about the services from their relatives, friends, public health home-visitors and nurses respectively. But the decision to go to the centres usually is made by women themselves who believe that their husbands would agree with them. The top four side effects of women using IUD are found to be as follows: uterus pain, irregular menstruation, white menstruation and back-pains. Side effects of women taking oral pills are: headache, dizziness and vomiting, moodiness and fatigue respectively. An analysis or the causes of discontinued use of contraceptive methods is focussed on women who have received these services at the first time. It is found that about half of the women stop using IUD because of loss of the IUD, pains (eg. stomachache, uterus pain, back pain), pregnancy, and the need to have more children. While the reasons for women to discontinue taking oral pills are because of pregnancy, the need to have more children, dizziness and vomiting, and poor health. There is no difference in characteristics between women coming for IUD and oral contraceptives with regard to age, number of children, the need for more children, working status, income, side effects, and distance and timing from their home to the public health centres. However, it is found that women with higher education prefer oral gills to the IUD. From an analysis of factors affecting the duration of continued use of the IUD-it is discovered that the duration and confidence of use is related (90% confidence) to the duration of the marriage. That is, women who have been married for not more than 5 years are more readily inclined to discontinue the use of IUD than women who have been married for 10 years and more. The following factors: age, number of children, working status, income, level of education the need for more children, side effects, and distance from home to public health centre, have no influence to the duration of the use of IUD. From an analysis of factors affecting the duration of continued use of contraceptive pills - it is said, that this is dependent (95% confidence) on age, duration of marriage, the .seed for more children, and side effects that have effects on the duration of the use of oral pills. The other factors such as number of children, income, formal education, distance and timing between home and PH centre, have no influence on the duration of the use of oral pills (95% conficence). Taking the above four independent variables, which have signi¬ficant influence on the duration of contined use of oral pills, an using them in analysing by means of multiple classification analysis using income and level of education as covariates, the result of analysis is that both covariates of income and level of education do not seem to give explain the variation in the duration of continued use of oral pills. On the other hand, the need to have more children together with the age, side effects and duration of marriage can explain the variation of the duration of continued use of oral pills at the rate of 8.4%.