summarized manually and the results were triangulated with the
quantitative findings.
Ethical approval was found from ethical review committee of
Jimma University. Written consent was obtained from Hadiya
zone health office and Hossana town health office administrations.
Verbal informed consent was obtained from each respondent and
confidentiality was assured before conducting the data collection,
to respect the respondents participating in the study.
The following standard and operational definitions were used;
Unintended pregnancy is a pregnancy that is either mistimed
(occurred earlier than desired) or unwanted (occurred when no
children or no more children were desired) at the time of
conception.
Results
Socio-demographic and Economic Characteristics
A total of 385 pregnant married women responded to the
questionnaire. The majority of the respondents 329 (85.5%) were
between 24–34 years of age. The mean age was found to be 27.6
(SD64.79) years with a median of 28. Two hundred and fifteen
(55.8%) of the study subjects had a family size of 1–4 with the
mean as 4.56 (SD62.19). Two-hundred and nineteen (56.9%)
were protestants in religion and 245 (63.6%) were Hadiya in
ethnic group (Table 1).
Forty-three (11.2%) were illiterate, 93(24.2%) attended primary,
and 94(24.4%) were in higher education. 63(48.1%) of those with
unintended pregnancies and 165(65%) while of those with
intended pregnancies had completed higher education. One
hundred and sixty-seven (43.4%) were housewives, 89(23.1%)
were government employees, 54(14%) were self-employed and
35(9.1%) were students. When asked about how they classified
their family income as compared to their neighbor, 233(60.5%)
classified themselves as average, 70(18.2%) well to do, 62(16.1%)
poor, 12(3.1%) very poor and 8(2.1%) as rich (Table 1).
Reproductive History
The mean ages at first sexual intercourse and at marriage were
19.8662.76 and 2062.78 respectively. One hundred and ninetyfour
(50.4%) of study subjects had first sexual intercourse in the
age bracket of 20–24 years followed by the age group of 15–19
years, where there were 161(41.8%). One hundred and ninetyseven
(51.17%) had married in the age group20–24; 158(41.03%)
between 15–19 years, while others had married between 25–34
years 26(6.75%). The mean duration of marriage was 7.7164.74.
The mean age at first pregnancy was 20.6 (SD62.8) with a median
of 20 years. Two hundred and thirteen (55.3%) study participants
had their first pregnancy in the 20–24 age bracket, followed by
127(33%) for the age group of 15–19 years (Table 2).
Among respondents 34% constituted unintended pregnancy,
24.4% mistimed and 9.6% totally unwanted. For 79 (20.5%) of the
study subjects were their first current pregnancy. As the number of
times a women become pregnant increases, tendency to experience
unintended pregnancy increases. A higher proportion of
women with more than 5 pregnancies 58(46.4%) reported their
pregnancy as unintended than women with 1–2 pregnancies
31(21.4%) (Table 3).
Among surveyed respondents, 91 (23.6%) of them had
previously unintended pregnancies and 86 (94.5%) of these
had had 1–2 previous unintended pregnancies. Previous
unintended pregnancy was a risk factor for subsequent
unintended pregnancy. A higher percentage of women with a
history of previous unintended pregnancy had unintended
pregnancy 53 (58.2%) as compared with women with no