Multilevel modeling of modern contraceptive use among rural and urban population of Ethiopia

Tilahun Ferede Asena, Arba Minch University
Girma Taye Aweke, Addis Ababa University

Ethiopia is the second-largest country in Africa, with estimated population of nearly 90 million and growth rate of 2.6 percent per year. It is believed that fertility decline continues if the wider use of contraception continues in all levels and groups of peoples. The present data set has a two-level hierarchical structure, with over 16,700 women nested within eleven geographical regions in Ethiopia. The effect of regional variations for religion implies that there exist considerable deference in modern contraceptive use among regions and a model with a random slope is more appropriate to explain the regional variation than a model with fixed coefficients or without random effects. As there is variation and differences in use of Modern contraceptives across regions in Ethiopia, it is recommended to balance the effects. Researchers should use multilevel models than traditional regression methods when the structure of a data is hierarchal as in EDHS data.