Community based study on married couples' family planning knowledge, attitude and practice in rural and urban Gambia.

Background: Family planning services have been free of charge and available in all the health facilities in the Gambia since 1975 yet contraceptive prevalence is only 17.5% and even 6% in some areas. Since the last census in 2003, there existed no available data on married couples' contraception status.

Objectives: To explore married couples' family planning knowledge, attitudes, and practices in rural and urban Gambia and to analyze what factors may affect such knowledge, attitudes and practices.

Methods: Quantitative cross-sectional study design was used. Through convenience sampling, 176 men and 235 women representing a total of 176 couples participated. A structured questionnaire was used for data collection.

Results: The mean scores of the married couples family planning knowledge, attitudes, and practices were 19.00 ± 6.11(ranging from 0 to 64), 6.90 ± 3.08 (0 to 14) and 4.69 ± 3.3 (0 to 19) respectively. Urban residents had higher scores on family planning practice than rural residents (p<.05). Attitude is the strongest predictor of practice (accounted for 34.6% of variance).

Conclusions: These findings offer a descriptive answer to "what are married couples' family planning knowledge, attitude and practice in Gambia", as well as suggesting broader health intervention programs in health education and promotion.