A university's male personels' knowledge and effecting factors about family planning

Aim
Male behaviors and attitudes about family planning reflect their knowledge about it. We aimed to determine male personnel’s family planning (FP) knowledge and factors that could influence.

Methods
This study was performed between September 2006 and September 2007 at Baskent University. A questionnaire composed of determinants of FP, self-description of FP and sexually transmitted diseases was given to volunteer academic and managerial personnel (n = 594). Data was analyzed by SPSS 11.0 statistical program.

Results
Mean age of the respondents was 33.4±7.0, 26% of them were graduated from college, 76.5% married, and 72.8% had children. Of male personnel, 11.4% was academic, and 88.6% was managerial stuff. FP determination was described as “having few children for economical household maintenance” for 36.8% of the respondents, and 35% of them was thought that it was “having as much children as you wish whenever you want”. 87.4% of them believed that men and women have equal responsibility on FP. Men knew condoms mostly (34.1%) as a FP method; oral contraceptives (24.7%), and intrauterine devices (17.2%) followed this. Their knowledge sources were health care providers in the primary care (24.1%), media/press (42.6%), and friends and relatives (8.4%). 58.3% of males were using a FP method during the study period, of these 44.4% were using condoms. Among the participants who did not use any kind of FP method, the reason for not using was planning or waiting for a baby (55.6%).

Conclusion
One third of the male personnel thought that FP is the way to limit number of children of the family because of economic reasons. We believe that the reason of this situation is gaining FP knowledge apart from health care system. We suggest that males should be more included to FP counseling services. Since media/pres is an important source of knowledge, more corporations should be done with it.