Contraceptives offer protection against unwanted pregnancy and some sexually
transmitted infections including HIV. Interventions to promote contraceptive use are
efforts to reduce complications and deaths from unwanted pregnancy and to slow the
spread of HIV/AIDS transmission. This study sought to determine the prevalence
and factors associated with uptake of contraceptives among undergraduate students
at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), given that
majority of the students fall in 18-35 year’s age bracket. A cross-sectional study
design was used which adopted quantitative (through self-administered
questionnaires) and qualitative (through KII) approaches. A sample size of 436 was
used for the quantitative and 3 staff from the health center for the qualitative data.
Quantitative data was entered into STATA v 9.2 (Strata Corp LP, Texas, and USA)
and cleaned prior to analysis. Factors associated with contraceptive use were
analyzed using both bivariate and multivariate analysis. The data from KII was
subjected to a manual thematic content analysis using general purpose software tools
using Microsoft Word. The findings of this study revealed that among 436 students,
55% (240) had experienced sexual intercourse. The overall level of contraceptives
use was low 34.2% (149).The level of awareness on contraceptives was 96.1%.
Contraceptive service provider attitude (P=0.001), affordability/accessibility/safety
(P=0.001) and reason for use (P=0.001) were significantly associated with
contraceptive uptake. Majority (72%) of students are involved in risky sexual
behaviour practices. Condom was the most commonly used contraceptive (54.8%).
Majority of students (60%) obtain contraceptives over the counter in pharmacies. It
was concluded that the uptake of contraceptive remains relatively low (34%) despite
the high level of awareness (96.1%). Contraceptive costs, availability, sources,
provider’s attitude and students’ contraceptive attitude and practices play a great role
in contraceptive uptake. It was recommended that more enhanced contraceptive
information is required aimed at improving the attitude of students and health care
providers for the purposes of contraceptive dissemination and use. Strategies to
educate the university students on benefits of contraceptive use should be developed
xviii
by university management and ministry of health to improve acceptability and
utilization of the services.