Abstract
BackgroundAn aim of this study is to introduce a practitioner-friendly behavior model. Few theories of health behavior explicitly take the effect of social norms on behavior into account. Generally, theories that do take social norms into account assume that the effect of social norms on behavior operates through motivation. We use the Fogg Behavior Model (FBM), a behavior model that is new to public health, to explore whether social norms are associated with modern contraceptive use among Nigerian women, and whether they affect behavior through motivation or through ability. In other words, do social norms that discourage contraception lower women’s motivation to use contraception or do they lower women’s ability to use contraception.MethodsThis study uses data from a cross-sectional household survey of Nigerian women, ages 14–24. The survey collected data on socio-economic and demographic characteristics of women, whether they were sexually experienced, and whether they used contraception. Modern contraceptive use was the outcome of interest for the study. The survey also collected data on social norms around premarital sex and contraceptive use. Multivariate logistic regression was used for the analysis.ResultsAfter adjusting for a range of socio-economic and demographic variables, we found that social norms that discourage contraception had a statistically significant negative association with contraceptive use (aOR = 0.90, p < 0.001). The analysis found that the negative association between social norms and contraceptive use remained statistically significant after controlling for motivation but did not remain statistically significant after controlling for ability.ConclusionThese findings suggest that social norms may affect contraceptive use in Nigeria through ability rather than motivation. In terms of programmatic implications, these finding suggest that public health interventions may be able to counter the negative effects of social norms that discourage contraceptive use by increasing women’s ability to practice contraception.
Highlights
An aim of this study is to introduce a practitioner-friendly behavior model
We explored the relationship between social norms and contraceptive use in a multivariate framework
Socio-demographic characteristics of women and modern contraceptive use Column 1 of Table 4 shows the frequency distributions of characteristics of women in the sample
Summary
Few theories of health behavior explicitly take the effect of social norms on behavior into account. We use the Fogg Behavior Model (FBM), a behavior model that is new to public health, to explore whether social norms are associated with modern contraceptive use among Nigerian women, and whether they affect behavior through motivation or through ability. Adolescent pregnancy is a major reason why girls drop out of school and into poverty [1] This is pertinent to Nigeria where more than half the population is under 24 years old [2]. There has been an upsurge of interest in social norms and their effects on contraceptive use behavior [4,5,6,7]. While there is no denying the importance of these nonsocial
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