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Contraceptive use, knowledge, attitude, perceptions and sexual behavior among female University students in Uganda: a cross-sectional survey

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Women's Health, January 2016
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  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (85th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (87th percentile)

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1 news outlet
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2 X users

Citations

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54 Dimensions

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785 Mendeley
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Title
Contraceptive use, knowledge, attitude, perceptions and sexual behavior among female University students in Uganda: a cross-sectional survey
Published in
BMC Women's Health, January 2016
DOI 10.1186/s12905-016-0286-6
Pubmed ID
Authors

Henry Nsubuga, Juliet N. Sekandi, Hassard Sempeera, Fredrick E. Makumbi

Abstract

In Uganda, the risk of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions remains high due to relatively low contraceptive use. There is paucity of data on knowledge, attitudes, perceptions and practices towards modern contraceptives and, sexual and reproductive health especially among the young female university students. A survey was conducted at Makerere University main campus in Kampala, Uganda during April 2014. A team of well-trained and experienced research assistants interviewed female undergraduate students who provided data on socio-demographic characteristics, knowledge, perceptions and attitudes and use of contraceptives, as well as other sexual and reproductive health practices. Users of any contraceptive method in the past 12 months were coded as '1' and none users as '0'. The prevalence of contraceptive use was determined as the number of users divided by all female participants. Prevalence ratios (PRs) with their corresponding 95 % confidence intervals were used as measures of association between contraceptive use and associated factors. The PRs were obtained via a modified Poisson regression model using a generalized linear model with Poisson as family and a log link without an offset but including robust standard errors. All analyses were conducted with Stata version 13. A total of 1,008 females responded to the survey; median (IQR) age was 21(20, 21) years, 38.6 % in year 2 of study, and nearly three quarters (72.3 %) were of Christian faith. Knowledge of any contraceptives was almost universal (99.6 %) but only 22.1 % knew about female condoms. Perceived acceptability of contraceptive use at the university (93 %) or being beneficial to male partners too (97.8 %) were high. Nearly 70 % had ever engaged in sexual intercourse and 62.1 % reported sexual intercourse in the past 12 months. Overall, 46.6 % reported current contraceptive use, with male condoms (34.5 %) being the commonest methods. Factors associated with higher contraceptive use were being in year 2, consensual union or perception that contraceptives are for females only. However, being evangelical/SDA or perception that contraceptive use is wrong was associated with lower contraceptive use. Overall, 9 % reported ever being pregnant, 2 % were pregnant at the time of the survey and a third (33.8 %) knew of a pregnant friend. About 40 % of ever pregnant respondents reported ever trying to terminate the pregnancy. Knowledge, perceived acceptability and benefits of contraceptive use were nearly universal, but contraceptive use was suboptimal in this setting. Ever trying to terminate a pregnancy was common and a clear indicator of unintended pregnancies.

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Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 785 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United Kingdom 1 <1%
Cameroon 1 <1%
United States 1 <1%
Portugal 1 <1%
Unknown 781 99%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Bachelor 158 20%
Student > Master 130 17%
Student > Postgraduate 46 6%
Researcher 38 5%
Student > Ph. D. Student 27 3%
Other 91 12%
Unknown 295 38%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Nursing and Health Professions 151 19%
Medicine and Dentistry 145 18%
Social Sciences 55 7%
Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutical Science 29 4%
Unspecified 20 3%
Other 77 10%
Unknown 308 39%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 10. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 19 July 2023.
All research outputs
#3,165,892
of 24,007,780 outputs
Outputs from BMC Women's Health
#351
of 2,065 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#55,918
of 404,036 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Women's Health
#3
of 16 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 24,007,780 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 86th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,065 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 10.2. This one has done well, scoring higher than 82% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 404,036 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 85% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 16 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 87% of its contemporaries.