Religious attitudes and other correlates of attitudes toward birth control among Filipino married alumnae of five Catholic women's colleges in Metro Manila

• Main Author: De los Reyes, Remedios J.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 1991
• Subjects: Birth control > Religious aspects; Universities and colleges > Alumni and alumnae; Women college graduates; Married women > Attitudes; Catholic universities and colleges; Sociology of Religion
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_doctoral/781
• Institution: De La Salle University

This study tries to find out the religious attitudes and other correlates of cognitive, affective, and overall attitudes toward birth control via artificial and Church-accepted methods -- among Filipino married alumnae of five Catholic women's colleges in Metro Manila.To carry out this objective, the researcher administered a three-part questionnaire to measure attitudes toward birth control methods, selected independent variables (marital age, educational attainment, socioeconomic status, occupational status, awareness of the Church's position on birth control, attitudes toward Women's Liberation Movement) and religious attitudes. The latter consisted of the Philippine Attitudes covering the areas of social involvement, behavior, God, Church and doubts (Moortgat, 1980). The instrument was given to 309 respondents from the Assumption College, San Lorenzo, Makati College of the Holy Spirit, Mendiola, Manila Miriam College, Quezon City St. Paul College, Manila and St. Scholastica's College, Manila.The study was descriptive-correlational-analytical in nature and made use of the survey method in gathering data. For the statistical treatment, non-parametric statistics for frequency data of cells, rows, and columns, a one-way analysis of variance, frequency and percentage distributions, means, Pearson r, Multiple R, stepwise regression, and t-test for a 2-level categorical variables were employed. The investigation of the attitudes toward birth control among Filipino married alumnae of five Catholic women's colleges in Metro Manila, has clarified several issues: the greater use of Church-accepted methods (24.59 percent) followed by use of artificial means (19.42 percent) the prevailing indecisiveness toward birth control among the respondents despite use, thus, the inconsistency between their attitudes toward birth control and their behavior their generally firm religious attitudes despite of a number of respondents using artificial means (19.42 percent) which is not acceptable to the Church the greater number of artificial users (14.2 percent) who submitted themselves to tubal ligation the significance in the relationship between their attitudes toward birth control and some of the independent variables marital age and socioeconomic status as the two frequently considered best predictors of attitudes toward birth control the growing influence of the Women's Liberation Movement's concern on reproductive health in the reason behind personal choices of artificial birth control users among the respondents and the non-significant relationship between the respondents' attitudes toward birth control and God as an area of religious attitudes scale and educational attainment, the latter could be due to the homogeneous grouping of respondents whose average educational attainment is a bachelor's degree finally, the low amount of variance of attitudes toward birth control among respondents attributed to socioeconomic status which shows their homogeneous grouping as affluent women who had their collegiate education in highly reputed schools for the elite descriptive of the five schools involved in the study.