Sexual behavior before marriage and knowledge and need of contraception among college students in Beijing

Objective To find out the attitude of college students toward sexual behavior before marriage and the know ledge and need on contraception.Methods An anonymous questionnaire survey was conduted among 1 126 college students selected with random cluster sampling.Results The students were tolerant to premarital sex.Among the students,82.76% considered non-marital sex being acceptable and 13.36% had premarital sexual experience.The average age at the first sexual behavior was 19.25 years for the students.For students having sexual behavior,16.67% of males reported their sex partners being pregnant and 6.06% of females reported pregnant experience.Only 58.78% of the students took contraceptive method when having sex every time,and only 21.85% of the students could selected correct method for emergency contraception.There were 89.78% of the students considered that it was necessary for the college to provide sex and contraceptive health education and wished to get the knowledge from lecture.Conclusion College students have a low level of knowledge and high level of need about contraception and have tolerant attitude to premarital sex.