Factors influencing unmet need for family planning among Ghanaian married/union women: a multinomial mixed effects logistic regression modelling approach

Unmet need for family planning is high (30%) in Ghana. Reducing unmet need for family planning will reduce the high levels of unintended pregnancies, unsafe abortions, maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality. The purpose of this study was to examine factors that are associated with unmet need for family planning to help scale up the uptake of family planning services in Ghana. This cross sectional descriptive and inferential study involved secondary data analysis of women in the reproductive age (15-49 years) from the Ghana Demographic and Health Survey 2014 data. The outcome variable was unmet need for family planning which was categorized into three as no unmet need, unmet need for limiting and unmet need for spacing. Chi-squared test statistic and bivariate multilevel multinomial mixed effects logistic regression model were used to determine significant variables which were included for the multivariable multilevel multinomial mixed effects logistic regression model. All significant variables (