Development and Validation of Meeting Unmet Need Programme for Family Planning in Benue State of Nigeria Implications for Counselling

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the study was to develop and implement an unmet need programme for family planning in the Benue State of Nigeria. The specific objectives of the study were to: determine the objectives and contents of meeting unmet need programme for Benue State and implement it in Benue State; determine the counselling implications of meeting unmet need programme; and determine if a significant difference exists between the mean scores of counselled and non-counselled women in meeting unmet need knowledge test to be administered before and after treatment. To achieve this objective, an experimental design was used to obtain the relevant data. To ascertain effectiveness of the programme, improve and sustain it in the state, five (5) research questions and four (4) hypotheses were formulated, answered and tested in the course of the study. A sample copulation of 600 respondents, consisting of 100 women, 80 counsellors and 420 students was used for the study. They were drawn from the three educational zones of the state. Data were collected using a questionnaire, a test and interview schedule. The data collected were analysed using mean, frequency counts, chisquare and t-test for unrelated sample. The specific findings of this study were the overwhelming acceptance by all the groups of rhe respondents on what should constitute the programme objectives and content materials and that there was a significant difference in the performance of experimental and control groups. The former performed better than the latter which was perhaps due to the effect of counselling. Equally revealed was that cultural setting, fear and ignorance about contraceptive use and lack of personnel training among others would constitute problems to effective implementation of the unmet need programme. The obvious implications of these findings are that effort be made to create awareness, counsel and give needed information on the benefits of family planning. This means that immediate implementation of meeting unmet need programme would help improve quality of life, control population growth which affects school work leading to examination malpractice, corruption and underdevelopment. Further implications are that if the objectives of the programme are to be achieved, policy decisions from government as well as concerted efforts from organizations, groups and individuals must be made. Basic knowledge in family planning, will provide a tool for societal transformation.