Pregnancy Intentions and Its Associated Factors Among Married Women in Resunga, Gulmi, Nepal

Abstract

BackgroundPregnancy intention refers to a women’s thinking at the time she became aware that she was pregnant. Pregnancy intentions can be categorized as intended and unintended. It is an important public health concern in every corner of the world, especially in developing countries. The study was carried out with an objective of determining the pregnancy intentions among married women in Resunga municipality, Gulmi, Nepal and test the association of pregnancy intentions with various socio-demographic, and reproductive health-related variables.MethodsThe community based cross-sectional study design was used to achieve the objective of the study. Married women of reproductive age of the Resunga municipality, Gulmi were selected and a multistage random sampling technique was adopted. Total 406 participants were involved in this study. Pretested semi-structured interview schedule adapted from Demographic and Health Survey of Nepal was used for data collection. All the statistical tests were performed in SPSS, version 25.0. The p -value was set at 5% level of significance. Descriptive and data exploratory analysis were performed. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis technique were conducted to explore the association between pregnancy intentions and predictor variables.ResultsThe study showed that out of total 410 pregnancies, 248 (60.5%) pregnancies were unintended, of which 78(19.05%) were unplanned and 170 (41.5%) were ambivalent. The remaining 162 (39.5%) pregnancies were considered intended. The chi-square analysis and bivariate analysis showed that women age, socioeconomic status, husband opposition, methods used before pregnancy, and intention of using contraception in the future were significantly associated with pregnancy intentions. When these variables were subjected for multivariate analysis, only socioeconomic status, and method of family planning used before pregnancy were found to be significantly associated with pregnancy intentions.ConclusionsThe study showed that unintended pregnancy is very high. The factors that were found to be associated with an unintended pregnancy were socioeconomic status and method of family planning used before pregnancy. The findings of this research work could be useful while providing different reproductive and family planning related services to women by considering predictors of unintended pregnancy that might increase planned pregnancy ultimately.