The Mass Media and Family Planning in Kenya

have been posed about a wide range of behavior, including the effects of television on violence, on children’s education, on consumers’ choices of products and on voting behavior, among others. The evidence on the effectiveness of such communications is mixed,1 but the belief that there is some effect has persisted and is reflected in the emergence of a whole industry devoted to such activities. The application of mass communications to influence fertility is a natural extension of the basic idea that the media can both inform and motivate people, even about such complex subjects as their reproductive means and goals. Communications efforts have become increasingly widespread in the developing world as part of international technical assistance and government programs designed to reduce fertility. A 1986 summary2 of radio coverage alone cited nearly 250 sources describing these efforts and some limited attempts at evaluation. For example, in Iran, a media campaign to increase contraceptive awareness and practice showed large increases in the number of both pill and condom users.3 In Egypt, a large-scale “before and after” experimental design that was implemented to evaluate a mass communications effort to promote family planning also showed positive results, once the effects of many of the variables that might jointly influence both awareness and use were controlled.4 Charles F. Westoff is professor of sociology and demographic studies and faculty associate, and Germán Rodríguez is senior research demographer and associate director, both of the Office of Population Research, Princeton University, Princeton, N. J., U. S. A. This article is based on Demographic and Health Surveys Working Paper No. 4, August 1993. Readers interested in technical details of the analysis are referred to the appendix of that report. The Mass Media and Family Planning in Kenya