Asia Pacific Journal of Multidisciplinary Research, Vol. 4, No. 2, May 2016 _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 76 P-ISSN 2350-7756 | E-ISSN 2350-8442 | www.apjmr.com Women Knowledge, Attitude, Approval of Family Planning and Contraceptive Use in Bangladesh. Md. Shahidul Islam 1 , Mahedi Hasan 2 1 Research Associate, BISR (Bangladesh Institute of Social Research) Trust, Bangladesh 2 Lecturer,Bangladesh University of Professionals (BUP), Bangladesh. shahidulsoc@gmail.com 1 ,mmhasan.stat@gmail.com 2 Date Received: March 21, 2016; Date Revised: April 30, 2016 Asia Pacific Journal of Multidisciplinary Research Vol. 4 No.2, 76-82 May 2016 P-ISSN 2350-7756 E-ISSN 2350-8442 www.apjmr.com Abstract – This paper attempted to examine the effects of women knowledge on attitude and family planning approval on contraceptive use of married women. The primary data was collected from Narsingdi municipality and the cluster sampling techniques had been adopted for collecting the data. Path analysis was used to determine the effects of factors that haveinfluence on contraceptive use. The result showed that the attitude and knowledge on contraception, and family planningapproval has significant effects on the use of contraceptive. The study also revealed that media exposure significantly effects on family planning approval, increase the positive attitude on contraceptive, and significantly increase the knowledge on contraception and STDs diseases. Women education and mass media can also be considered as potential factors to influence the contraceptive use. Keywords - Contraceptive, Attitude, Knowledge, Family Planning, Path analysis INTRODUCTION Most of the developing countries agreed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. Bangladesh is one of them and trying to attain MDGs especially to improve maternal health, women empowerment, reduces child mortality, reduce fertility and hazard of HIV or AIDS diseases. The contraceptive is the importance part to progress the female reproductive health as well as to fertility control to any country [1]. About this necessity Khan and Khan (2010) has mentioned that “Contraceptive choice is central element of quality of care in the provision of family services and an important dimension of women’s reproductive right” [2]. After the Second World War, the explosive population growth had become a vital concern because social, political, cultural and economic situation completely depends on this issue [3]. At this time, family planning program was implemented to decline fertility [4]. After 1980s, this program successfully declines the fertility rate in many developing countries [5]. Among the countries, Bangladesh has set a good example to decline the fertility rate and increase the usage of contraceptive [6]. Bangladesh is the 8th most populous country in the world with a total population of about 160 millions and the fertility rate is 2.2 percent [7]. It is understandable that the continuous population growth constitutes a primary threat to the continued economic growth and development in our country [8]. The government of Bangladesh and some nongovernment organizationshave implemented some programs to aware about family planning and distributed contraceptive freely to the stakeholders [9]. After involving this programmed, women gained sufficient knowledge about the benefit of small family size, about the right contraceptive method [10]. As a result, the fertility rate declined further by 10 percent from 2004 to 2007 and almost 15 percent between 2007 and 2011[11].The use of modern contraceptive method also increased by this time. But there are still many barriers prevails on contraceptive uses, especially for the females; they always face difficulties in this context. Female contraception use decision depends on the husband and wife's mentality,family members, religion, education, financial condition etc. Furthermore, various social-economic and cultural factors are also influence the couple’s contraceptive use. [12]). It is also noted that some demographics factors such as age, son preferences, number of sons and daughter are also important factor to contraceptive use [2]