Factors Affecting Male's Reproductive Health Behaviour in Punjab, Pakistan

Abstract

In Pakistan, male involvement in reproductive health started long before the concept of a holistic approach emerged from ICPD in 1994. Men are far behind the knowledge about contraceptives, authority of decisions making, religiosity, exposure of media, health attitude, physical cost, male violence, drugs and family planning services. These circumstances have damaging-effect on men's reproductive health as well. The poor reproductive health of men in the entire Pakistan has been reported in many studies. The different national and international agencies have shown a great concern on this alarming situation of men's deteriorating reproductive health status. They have recommended to investigate the men reproductive health behaviour in relation to different aspects. A cross sectional study has been conducted in 3-districts of Punjab province. One tehsils from each district will be selected randomly and sample of 272 men from Tehsil-1 i.e. Rawalpindi, 197 from Tehsil-2 i.e. Bahawalpur and 131 from Tehsil-3 i.e. Toba Tek Singh. From each Tehsil equal no. of respondents were selected from rural and urban areas by random sampling technique to explore the research objectives. In this way the total sample size was 600, 300 from rural and 300 from urban areas. A well-structured questionnaire consisting of open ended and close ended questions was prepared in the light of research objectives. Descriptive statistics such as frequency distributions mean, standard deviation was worked out to describe the data. Bivariate analysis along with the application of different statistical tests such as chi-square test and gamma test according to the nature of the level of measurement of variables under study was applied to examine the relationship between variables. It was concluded that there was strong positive relationship between age, education and income of the respondents and their reproductive health behaviour.