Family Planning Radio Messages Directed at Men and Women in a Developing Society: A Case Study

Abstract

The study examined radio family planning messages with particular reference to the nature of the audience influence on communication content by using a chat program on radio in a developing society. The study adopted content analysis research method with a purposive sampling technique and used a radio script having six items for analyses. Results showed that there were more family planning segments for women than for men and, there were more family planning for drugs/pills and materials/implantation than for injection. In addition, there were side effects in the use of family planning just as there were quite a number of frequently asked questions except for condoms-fiesta/kiss. This paper concludes that radio scripts/messages for family planning programs should accommodate more topics/segments of family planning for men and women, specifically, natural methods should be included. Furthermore, radio family planning messages should focus more on the benefits of family planning and specifically the benefits of contraceptive pill and post pill emergency should be examined. Other formats of programs should be employed in the campaign for family planning messages on radio, and development communicators and content developers of radio family planning scripts should explore more areas to make radio messages more robust.