Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Oct 31, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Nov 8, 2018 - Nov 9, 2018
Date Accepted: Apr 9, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Feasibility of Using SMS and in-depth interviews to collect data on Contraceptives Use among Young, Unmarried sexually active Men in Moshi, Tanzania and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
ABSTRACT
Background:
Data on contraceptive needs and use among young unmarried men is limited. Conventional ways of data collection may lead to limited and unreliable information on contraceptive use due to sensitivity of the topic as many young men feel ashamed to discuss their behavior in using contraceptives. As SMS is anonymous and a commonly used way of communication, we believe that if deployed it will create a promising user-friendly means of data collection. We aimed to examine feasibility of using SMS to collect data on contraceptive practices among young unmarried sexually active men in Moshi and Ethiopia.
Objective:
The objective was to investigate the feasibility of using SMS to collect data on sexually active, young, unmarried men’s sexual behavior and contraceptive preferences, practices, and needs in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) and Moshi (Tanzania).
Methods:
We enrolled men aged 18-30 years who were students (in Ethiopia and Tanzania), taxi or local bus drivers/ assistants (Ethiopia and Tanzania) and Kilimanjaro porters (Tanzania) and construction workers (Ethiopia). Young men were interviewed using a topic list on contraceptive use. They were followed for six months by sending two-weekly short messages service (SMS) texts with questions about contraceptive use. If there were replies where young men indicated that they needed contraceptives during the reporting period or were not satisfied with the method they used, they were invited for a follow-up interview. At the end of the study, we conducted exit interviews using a semi-structured questionnaire by calling our participants through mobile phones to explore the feasibility, acceptability and accuracy of using SMS hence to validate the study findings in both countries.
Results:
We enrolled 71 young unmarried men, 35 in Tanzania and 36 in Ethiopia aged between 18-30 years. Analyses showed that, in Moshi, 1908 messages were delivered to participants and we received 1119 SMSs as replies. In Ethiopia, however, only 525 messages were sent to participants while we received 248 replies. The question on having dated a girl in the past weeks was asked 438 times in Tanzania and replied 252 (58%) times; of which 148 (59%) replied with “YES”, whereas in Ethiopia it was asked 314 times and replied 64 times (20%); of which 52 (81%) replied with “YES”. The question on contraceptive use was sent successfully 112 times, of which 108 (96%) were replied of which 105 (94%) were “YES” in Tanzania. In Ethiopia, 17 questions were replied only 2 (11%) times. Exit-interviews in Tanzania have shown that SMS was accepted by 22 (88%) out of 25 interviewed participants.
Conclusions:
Despite network and individual challenges, the SMS system was found feasible in Moshi but not in Addis Ababa. We recommend more research to scale up the method in different groups and regions.
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