Effect of population and family planning course education on awareness and attitude of male students

Aims. Family planning has been accepted as a strategy against increasing the population in most countries. One of the success factors of family planning program is teaching its goals to students. This study was performed on male students of Mahabad Islamic Azad University to evaluate the effect of teaching "population and family planning" course on awareness and attitude of them. Methods. This is a semi-experimental before and after study. The sampling method was simple non-randomized and available by which 195 male students were selected from different courses and levels of education. Data was collected by a questionnaire in two steps. SPSS 13 software, explanatory and understanding methods like T-test and correlation coefficient were used for analyzing data. Results. 3% of students had the experience of reselecting this lesson. The awareness point mean was 3.2 from 15 points of knowledge section of questionnaire before passing the "population and family planning" that was increased to 9.67 after it (p=0.001). Also, the point mean of students attitude was 4.75 from 15 points of attitude section of questionnaire, before passing the "population and family planning" that was increased to 8.29 after it (p=0.002). There were a significant differences between age, martial situation, field of study, record of selecting this course, year of entrance to university, parent's education degree, wives educational degree and her field of study with knowledge and attitudes of students (p<0.05). Presenting family planning services by teaching the "population and family planning" course in universities is effective to improve the awareness and attitude of students and as a result to modify their function in family planning.