Abstract Introduction Family planning is a basic human right for an individual / couple to exercise control over their fertility, make informed decision on the number of children they want to have. The purpose of the study was to assess the factors contributing to underutilization of artificial contraceptive methods among female nursing students of KIU Ishaka-Bushenyi. Methodology. The study employed a descriptive cross-sectional design, a simple random sampling technique was used to get a total of 189 students who participated in the study, a self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection, data was analyzed using quantitative methodology where it was entered in analysis software, analyzed and presented using tables, frequencies, columns and pie charts using SPSS version 20.0 Results. The results showed that Majority of the respondents(65.0%) reported not having used artificial contraceptive methods and someone’s age whereby majority (63.4%) of the respondents who reported not having utilized artificial contraceptives were between the age of 28 and 32 years, religion (65.0%) year of study whereby majority of the respondents (66.7%) were in first and fourth year and culture (43.4%)were among the major contributing factors to underutilization of artificial contraceptive methods also fear of side effects whereby (64.6%) of the respondents reported that fear of side effects made them not to use artificial contraceptives and having one sexual partner contributed to underutilization of artificial contraceptives. Conclusion Majority of the respondents reported having not used artificial contraceptive methods and someone’s age, religion year of study and culture were among the major contributing factors to underutilization of artificial contraceptive methods also fear of side effects and having one sexual partner contributed to underutilization of artificial contraceptives.
