Prevalence of Premarital Sexual Practice and Its Associated Factors Among Senior Students in Alage Technical Vocational Education Training College, Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resource, Ethiopia

The study was conducted to explore the prevalence of premarital sexual practice and its associated factors among senior students in Alage ATVET College, Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resource, Ethiopia. A cross-sectional survey was conducted on 363 systematically selected students by using self-administered questionnaire and complimented by a qualitative data. The data was entered, cleaned and analyzed by using SPSS version 20. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regressions were used for quantitative data analysis while thematic presentation was used for qualitative data. Odds ratio with 95% confidence interval was used to measure the strength and significance of the association. In this study, more than half 188(53%) of the participants had premarital sexual experience, of which 131(69.7%) were males and 57(30.3%) were females. The mean age at first sexual intercourse was 18.12 for males and 17.07 for females. The main reasons reported for initiation of premarital sexual intercourse were personal interest to try sex(36.17%), peer pressure (26.6%) and to get money or gifts 22 (11.7%). While male sex[AOR=3.33, 95% CI(1.2-9.24)], having pocket money[AOR=9.63, 95% CI(3.61-25.79)], watching pornography[AOR=1.34,95% CI(0.45-3.98)], having sexual experienced friends [AOR=2.97, 95% CI(1.06-8.32)], alcohol drinking [AOR=1.54; 95% CI(0.59-4.01)] and dating experience [AOR=42.43, 95% CI(14.93-120.62)] were found to be statically significant predictors of premarital sexual practice. In conclusion, this particular study indicated that a substantial proportion of youths were practicing premarital sexual practices that predispose them to different reproductive health problems. Therefore, there is a need for institutions of higher education to develop skill building programs and policies that will assure a safe institutional environment, promote access to health care and sex education, encourage peer counseling and parental communication. Keywords: prevalence, premarital sex, risky sexual practice, factors of premarital sex, Alage Technical Vocational Education Training College. DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/9-19-03 Publication date:October 31st 201