Discontinuity of Family Planning in Nigeria: A Geo-Additive Model Approach

Abstract

This study explored the factors associated with discontinuance of Family Planning (FP) in Nigeria. A geo-additive model was specified to simultaneously measure the fixed, nonlinear, spatial and random effects inherent in the data. The fixed effect of categorical covariates was modelled using the diffuse prior, the nonlinear effect of continuous variable was modelled using the P-spline with second-order random walk, the spatial effects followed Markov random field priors while the exchangeable normal priors were used for the random effect of the community. Application was based on the 2013 Nigerian Demographic Health Survey (NDHS) data. Discontinuance of FP is positively associated with rural place of residence, no or primary education, Islamic religion, marital dissolution, health/body concern and northern region of Nigeria.

Keywords: Bayesian inference, family planning, Nigeria, spatial analysis