Demographic behaviour of the Scheduled Castes People of Dhubri District of Assam with a focus on their attitude to family planning and the adoption behaviour of family planning measures.

Abstract

Knowledge and practice of family planning is one of the important variables regulation fertility of a couple. Bongaarts has suggested that family planning programmes not only reduce fertility, but they also help in diffusion of knowledge about fertility regulation1. Contraceptives use take place because of two reasons - for fertility control and for spacing. Initially, family planning methods were adopted only for birth control, but at present most of the newly married couples use it for spacing. The acquisition of knowledge and practice of family planning, a proximate determinant of fertility differentials, depend on different socio-economic and demographic variables. (Such as education of the mothers, occupation of the wives, total family income, live birth, age at marriage etc.) The immediate objective of the National Population Policy (2000) is to address unmet needs for contraception. Couples protection rate is an indicator of the prevalence of contraceptives practice in a population. It is defined as percent of eligible couples effectively protected against childbirth by one or other approved methods of family planning.2 Thegeneral objective of the research study is to highlight thedemographic behaviour of the Scheduled Castes People of Assam and their attitudes towards family planning and family planning measures. The specific objectives of the study is to study the level of penetration of family planning knowledge and the level of practicing such knowledge among the respondent females Scheduled Castes of Assam. The research project will be primarily based on field data collected from the sample households of the sample villages with the help of a series of questionnaires prepared for the purpose. The samples will be selected with the help of multi-phased (Stratified) sample technique both random and purposive.