A Statistical Application of Regression Analysis to Investigate and Determinethe Factors that Influence the Uptake of Family Planning in Meru County, Kenya

Family planning is one of the mitigation factors adopted by the Kenyan Government in achieving its strategic development goals through reducing maternal and child mortality, preventing unwanted pregnancies, preventing STDs, promoting education, and women's economic empowerment. Despite the many advantages of family planning, its use and adoption in Kenya are still low. The low application of family planning methods has been associated with low awareness of the existence of family planning services, lack of information about various forms of family planning services, and negative attitude toward some family planning methods due to lack of counseling/sensitization to mothers on their side effects, complex in assessing the family planning services by some rural women, religious beliefs and fear of not being able to bear children again. South Imenti is a Sub County in Meru County associated with low uptake of family planning services despite providing free family planning services in all government clinics. The goal of this study was to employ the regression method to examine factors that impact the usage of family planning methods in the South Imenti sub-county. The target population was 3390 women between the ages of 15 and 49. A total of 385 mothers were chosen using simple random sampling from the target population for this survey. The study used descriptive and binary logistic regression methods of analysis. The explanatory variables included education level, age, marital status, Number of children born, Religion, Occupation, household income, and frequency of listening to media. In conclusion, the application of the binary logistic regression model on the data collected showed that age, marital status, level of education, number of children mothers have, and frequency of mothers following media were potential explanatory variables that significantly affected the use of family planning methods. The education level of women of childbearing age 15-49 years had the highest significant effect on the usage of family planning