Effectiveness of teaching contraceptive rhythm methods in the Polish education system over the past 10 years
Bozena Jawie,
Academy of Physical Education, Krakow, Poland
Purpose: to establish whether the 10 years of mastering family planning education program does or does not result in the graduates’ improved understanding of women’s fertility symptoms.
Method: An anonymous, using the same questionnaire, survey was conducted twice, among freshmen of Physical Education faculty at the Academy of Physical Education in Krakow: in the spring of 1995 (the questionnaire was filled in by 42 women and 60 men) and in the spring of 2005 (filled in by 76 women and 93 men). All the respondents were between 20 and 22 years of age, all were single, the majority (60.9%) has had their first sexual intercourse, and a half (50.2%) declared they were disappointed with what their schools had taught them about preventing unwanted pregnancy. The ability to assess the following parameters of female fertility was compared: 1. numbering the cycle’s days; 2. recognizing fertility based on the look of cervical mucus; 3. recognizing fertility based on the number of days to the next anticipated period (2nd day); and 4. recognizing fertility based on the number of days from the begining of last period (14th day). Differences between the two groups were assessed with X2 test and Pearson’s C*.
Results: Students of both sexes in both groups could not correctly number the cycle’s days (only 21.0% of correct answers), and had a faint idea of a relation between a fertile mucus and a possibility of conceiving (14.8% of correct answers). Statistically significant change (improvement) was observed in recognizing the days before an anticipated period as potentially fertile if the ovulation has not been monitored. In this case an average of correct answers in both groups was 31.6% and has increased from 14.3% to 39.5% among women (X2= 8,676, df=2, C*=0,343), and from 30.0% to 32.3% among men (X2= 10,528, df=2, C*=0,333). Statistically significant differences were observed in the ability to recognize the 14th day of the cycle as a potentially fertile one. An average of only 18.1% of the respondents has correctly stated it is impossible to assess fertility using a calendar. Among women in both groups the percentage of this answer has not changed (respectively 18.4% and 18.4%), the percentage of respondents recognizing the 14th day of the cycle as a fertile one has decreased (from 47.4% to 46.1%) and so has the percentage of respondents who were not able to give an answer (from 34.2% to 17.1%) (X2 Yates correction = 8,182, df=3, C*=0,329). Among men the percentage of correct answers has decreased from 24.1% to 15.1% and the percentage of the remaining answers looked as follows: „infertile” from 12.1% to 16.1%, „fertile” from 41.4% to 26,9%, „I do not know” from 22.4% to 41.9% (X2= 6,392, df=3, C*=0,257).
Conclusion: the low effectiveness of teaching rhythm methods makes them continually useless to high school graduates.