Abstract
Social Science & Medicine. 2000; 50(2): 215-31.This study estimates the impact of a social network approach to family planning field worker communication using longitudinal survey data from a panel of married women in Bangladesh. The paper also tests a theoretical model of behavior change that explains why women adopt modern contraceptives. In the social network approach, government family planning field workers were trained to organize a series of group discussions with women in the homes of opinion leaders located at central points in the village social network. A set of intervening variables, referred to collectively as "ideation", is derived from diffusion of innovation and social network theory to explain how the social network approach affects contraceptive behavior. It was found out that the increase in modern contraceptive use was 5 times greater among women in the social network approach than among women who were visited by field workers at home. Furthermore, the impact of the social network approach on modern contraceptive use was almost double that of conventional field worker visits after controlling for the effect of prior contraceptive use and intention, prior to home visits, and selected sociodemographic characteristics. Although, it came out that both approaches had the same degree of impact on ideation.
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