The Role of Social Marketing Theory in Assessing Insecticide-Treated Net Usage Intentions among Pregnant Women in Ghana

Abstract

Malaria infection in pregnancy is highly risky for the mother and the fetus. The use of Insecticide-Treated Nets (ITNs) is a key social marketing intervention for malaria prevention during pregnancy. As a malaria endemic country, statistics show that Ghana records about 3.2 million malaria cases annually with about 38,000 of these cases leading to death due to low utilization of ITNs, thus making it imperative for the need for behaviour change interventions that positively position ITN as an effective strategy to prevent malaria. This research sought to utilize the Integrated Model of Behaviour Prediction (IMBP) to examine the ITNs usage intention among pregnant women in Ghana. The study was a cross-sectional survey that involved the use of self-administered structured questionnaire to collect primary data from pregnant women in Accra. Also, a convenience-based non-probability sampling method was employed to select the four hundred (400) pregnant women who completed the survey instrument. Hypotheses were tested through correlational and regression analytic procedures. Data was analyzed using the SPSS 20.0. The results from the regression indicate that there is a strong and significant reliability between variables used for the constructs. The results further show that, among the three main constructs that influence intention in the model (attitude, perceived norms, and self-efficacy), attitude and perceived norms were the potent predictors of intention to use ITNs, with attitude being the highest contributor of intention to use ITNs for malaria prevention. The implication of this finding is that social marketing for malaria prevention programmes must place more emphasis on attitude-changing interventions in order to influence malaria related preventive behaviour.