Abstract
Longitudinal survey data from a panel of married women in Bangladesh
is used to estimate the impact of a social network approach to family
planning field worker communication and to test a theoretical model
of behavior change that explains why women adopt modern contraceptives.Government
field workers were trained to organize group discussions with women
in the homes of opinion leaders located at central points in each
village's social network. A set of intervening variables, referred
to collectively as `ideation', are derived from diffusion of innovation
and social network theory to explain how the social network approach
affects contraceptive behavior. The rate of increase in modern contraceptive
use was found to be five times greater among women in the social
network approach than among women who were visited by field workers
at home. The impact of the social network approach on modern contraceptive
use was almost double that of conventional field worker visits after
controlling for the effects of prior contraceptive use and intention,
prior home visits, and selected socio-demographic characteristics.
Both approaches had the same degree of impact on ideation. The results
confirm the influence of ideation on fertility change and suggest
that family planning programs would benefit from training field workers
to use a social network approach.
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