The Impact of Sexual Autonomy and Marital Communication on Contraceptive Behavior among unmarried Couples

The purpose of this study was to investigate the correlation between the contraceptive behavior and sexual autonomy of unmarried young people. The research was carried out among unmarried young people in Korea. The participants of this study were university students in C Province of Korea, and the study was performed in 2016. One hundred seventy four answer sheets out of two hundred respondents were analyzed except for 26 incomplete ones. The independent variables are sexual autonomy, marital communication, and contraceptive behavior for dependent variable. SPSS WIN 22.0 for statistical analysis of the data was used in this study. The participants in this study are 67 males (38.5%) and 107 females (61.5%). Regarding the proportion of age, 19.5% of participants were under 20 years old, 70.1% of participants were between 21 and 25 years old. The experience rate of sexual intercourse the young couples was 97.1%. The overall mean of the couple's sexual autonomy was upper medium level (3.99±0.69), marital communication was upper level (3.03±0.42), and relationship satisfaction was upper medium (3.86±0.55). The research participants showed a statistically significant difference in sexual autonomy (t=3.674, p<.001), and marital communication (t=3.128, p=.002). The participants using contraception showed higher sexual autonomy than the subjects not using contraception. Also, the participants using contraception showed higher marital communication ability than the subjects not using contraception. Sexual autonomy was significantly positively related with marital communication (r =.235, p=.002) and relationship satisfaction (r =.207, p=.006). Marital communication was significantly positively related with relationship satisfaction (r =.474, p<.001). According to results from logistic regression analysis, sexual autonomy (OR=2.472, CI=1.431∼4.272), marital communication (OR=3.140, CI=1.182∼8.341), contraceptive knowledge(OR=2.248, CI=1.134∼4.455) were found to be factors significantly influenced unmarried couple's contraceptive behaviour. It is investigated that contraceptive behavior is associated with communication of young couples and sexual autonomy. Therefore, communication and sexual autonomy should be taken into account in contraception education program to increase safe sex life for unmarried couples.