Year of Publication

2016

College

Martin School of Public Policy and Administration

Date Available

10-27-2017

Executive Summary

Realizing the necessity of family planning, the Indonesian government started family planning programs in the late 1960s, long before the global Program of Action from the International Conference of Population (ICPD) in 1994.

Many studies have tried to draw plausible explanations for the prevalence of family planning focused mainly on socio-economic factors but few studies have approached the issue from the perspective of mass media influence as the variable of interest. This study attempts to fill this gap created by the lack of empirical evidence about mass media effects of family planning choices by examining the contraceptive behavior of Indonesian married women.

In this study, I used two Indonesia cross-sectional DHS couple datasets from 2007 and 2012. These datasets have a nationally representative sample that would reflect my entire population of interest: married women in Indonesia. To test my hypothesis, I used a logistic regression with respondents’ likelihood to participate in family planning programs currently and in the future as the dependent variables, exposure to mass media as the independent variable of interest and several control variables that might influence the association.

I found that, overall, television had a positive association with Indonesian married women’s contraceptive behaviors. But, the existing family planning campaigns in mass media did not show any clear pattern. This finding suggests that by creating effective family planning television campaigns, the Indonesian government might be able to overcome its budget constraints in delivering information about the family programs.

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