Abstract

The study investigated Religious Beliefs and Contraceptive Use Among Married PersonsinOgun State, Nigeria. The study examined the influence of variables of Religion, gender andnumber of children on the perception of the respondents. The descriptive survey researchdesignwas adopted for the study. A total of 600 participants were selected through the use of purposive, proportional and stratified sampling techniques. The instrument used to collect the requiredinformation was a questionnaire entitled “Religious Beliefs and Contraceptive Use Questionnaire(RBCUQ)”. The reliability coefficient of the instrument was 0.80, which was obtainedthroughthe test-retest method. One research question and three null hypotheses were raised to guidetheconduct of the study. The results revealed that religion promote contraceptive use, Menandwomen in religious community share the same views on contraception and religious leaderinfluenced decisions about contraception. The hypotheses were tested using the t-test andAnalysis of Variance (ANOVA) statistics at 0.05 level of significance. The result showedthat there was no significant difference in Religious Beliefs and Contraceptive Use Among MarriedPersons in Ogun State, Nigeria based on Religion and the result also showed that there wasasignificant difference in Religious Beliefs and Contraceptive Use Among Married PersonsinOgun State, Nigeria based on gender and number of children. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended that marriage counsellors and religious leaders should make considerateandbeneficial decisions on how to manage their family size through the use of contraceptivesirrespective of their religious belief.