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Aine Seitz McCarthy
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Religion and contraceptives remix

6/12/2014

4 Comments

 
I have the following table from my preliminary Meatu district health data. It still blows my mind because it basically contradicts all my previously held thoughts about religion, Tanzania and contraceptives.
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The "Contraceptives" column refers to the number of couples that report using any form of contraception. "Percent using" is the portion of households identifying with a particular religion that use contraceptives.
First of all, 67% of households interviewed did not identify with any religion, not even traditional beliefs. This contradicts everything my Swahili teacher told us about being a good East African ("one should always at least identify as a major religion, even if one never prays"). I guess not so in Meatu? People do report being largely fatalistic, though. 35% of women report that their fertility decisions (do you want another child?) are "up to God" and this group is made up of only one quarter of those that identify with a religion.

The real kicker, though, is the fact that couples who identified with a religion were more likely to use contraceptives. You can see from the number of households and the number of women reporting contraceptive use that the sample size is small. However, Catholics (88 households) have almost twice the overall rate of contraceptive use! Someone tell Paul Ryan?

My hypothesis on this second observation is that affiliation with a larger religion in these extremely rural villages is actually a signal of being more cosmopolitan. There's also a good chance that official doctrine in the Catechism of the Catholic Church isn't making its way all the way to Mwajidalala and Longalonhiga. I'm not complaining.

As for any explanation for the dearth of reported religious identification, my only hypothesis is that I asked the wrong person. I asked men. This time around, I'm asking women. I'm otherwise extremely surprised that individuals don't identify as more religious.

I'm accepting any and all theories, hypotheses and shots in the dark as to why.
4 Comments
Jason Kerwin link
6/12/2014 02:47:44 pm

One thing that comes to mind is that this may be a function of how the religion data was collected. Do you know what the underlying survey question was? In the past, I have seen "none" as somewhat-common a response to religion questions that are really about what church you attend. Another possibility is that either in data collection on processing, "none" was used to code for missing values, refusals, or both. Arguably the most likely possibility is that "None" was used for "none of the above" - a different type of Christian denomination, for example. If this came from your own survey then you can just ask the enumerators how they handled that situation (although since you're posing this to us, I assume that you don't have access to the people who asked the questions).

One cross-check on that is the fact that many of the people who list no religion also say that their fertility is "Up to God". That suggests that most of them do, in fact, follow some sort of monotheistic religion.

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Emilia
6/12/2014 10:57:19 pm

Sort of in line with the above comment - what about asking folks if they believe in God? You could also ask a subsample an open question (if your original survey question gave a list of options) and see if that introduces some other options that you hadn't thought of.

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Aine McCarthy link
6/13/2014 04:55:37 am

Thanks for the comments. I trained the enumerators myself, so I know "none" wasn't used for missing values or refusals. I also asked during focus groups about the main religions in the area, and thought I had covered them all, but Emilia, you bring up a good point. There may be some other simple monotheism that isn't an established religion, which I should perhaps add to this short list. The enumerators who asked this question have all gotten better jobs in the capital (which I like to think speaks highly of their training:), but my field assistant (their direct supervisor) was just as surprised as I am.

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Aine McCarthy link
6/13/2014 05:04:13 am

Another big-brained friend tossed out the following super interesting idea:

"I wonder if there is an impact [on contraceptive use that comes] from communal activities associated with religion. By coming together on a regular basis to pray, attend service, and/or go to church, these acts provide more opportunities for communal sharing among similar people, including women (of all ages) talking about personal issues contraceptives.

While certainly non-religious people have community and come together for shared activities, those who have regular times to come together through the conduit of religion might be more apt to talk about such things."

I really really like this hypothesis. Firstly, because I observed a couple of church women's groups myself during village introductions. And second, there's an enormous literature in sociology about the role of social networks in the dissemination of health and fertility information. I haven't narrowed down exactly how to deal with bias of selection into these networks (religious or not) in terms of measuring a direct effect, but I'm certainly asking about whom the interviewee heard about contraceptives from.

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    Aine Seitz McCarthy

    International development, economics and some pretty ambitious ideas from a stubborn graduate student clinging to her sense of adventure.


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