Investigating the Relationship between Religiosity and Media Consumption with Women's fertility Behavior (Case Study: Married Women aged 15-49 in Tabriz)

Reproductive behavior indicates a person's intellectual background, decision-making, and ultimately performance in having a child. Social researchers consider the changes in the family as the inevitable result of structural changes in society, especially ideological changes. In this study, fertility behavior in relation to the variables of religiosity, media consumption and education level has been studied by survey method. The statistical population of the present study was married women aged 15-49 years old in Tabriz, which according to the 2016 census, their number is about 338220 people. The sample size was estimated to be 498 people using Cochran's formula and the sampling method was multi-stage cluster. In order to collect data, standard and researcher-made questionnaires were used. The descriptive findings of the study showed that 12.9% of the women were childless and 75.5% of women had one or two children. The results of testing the research hypotheses showed that there is a positive and significant relationship between religiosity and women's fertility behavior and with increasing the level of women's religiosity, their fertility and childbearing behavior improved. While there was a significant inverse relationship between women's media consumption and their reproductive behavior. Also, the fertility rate of women was significantly different based on the level of education of women and their husbands.