Magnitude of Pre-marital Sexual Practice and its Associated Factors among Mizan Preparatory School Students in Mizan Aman Town, South West Ethiopia

Background: Premarital sexual practice increases adolescents risk for infection with HIV and other STDs. In Ethiopia, an increasingly large number of adolescents are enrolled in preparatory schools. Early initiation to sexual intercourse without having proper protection has been one of the concerns. Objective: The objective of this study was to assess magnitude of premarital sexual practice and associated factors among Mizan preparatory school students in Mizan town, south west Ethiopia. Methodology: A cross-sectional study design was conducted from April 9 to June 20, 2017. Data collection tool used in this study was structured self-administered questionnaire. Data was checked for completeness and accuracy and entered to SPSS version 21 software packages for analysis. Frequency distribution, charts, figures and tables were used to present the results. Odd ratio and Logistic regression with 95% confidence intervals were used to see the association between explanatory variables with premarital sexual practice. Result: Of 320 study participants, 25.2% (56.6% of males and 43.4% of females) of them reported as they had practiced premarital sexual intercourse before. Drinking alcohol (AOR=4.06, [95%CI: 2.06-7.99]), watching pornographic films and educational status of mother were significantly associated with premarital sexual practices. The reasons cited for the initiation of the first sexual intercourse were fall in love (38.2%), had desire (27.6%), rape (3.9%), peer pressure (10.6%), to get money/gifts (7.9%) were drunk (2.6%) and other 9.2%. Conclusion and recommendation: In this studied area the prevalence of premarital sexual practices among students were significant in contrast to other similar regions of the country. Moreover, practicing risky sexual behaviors such as khat chewing, drinking alcohol, smoking cigarette at early age were the common. Therefore, it is imperative to bring behavioral change through establishing and strengthening school anti AIDS clubs and integrating reproductive health education at all levels of schools.