Kinsey Institute reports on a decade of research into condom use

ERJ staff report (DS)

Bloomington, Indiana -- A research team from Indiana University has painstakingly documented a wide range of errors people make when using condoms.

"Merely knowing whether someone uses a condom is not sufficient in estimating condom effectiveness," said Stephanie Sanders, associate director of The Kinsey Institute and member of the The Kinsey Institute Condom Use Research Team (CURT). "Our research goes beyond the 'yes' and 'no' questions to get to the problems that people have using condoms.

CURT, a collaborative research team involving The Kinsey Institute, the Rural Center for AIDS/STD Prevention (RCAP), and affiliated researchers from Canada and the U.K., has spent 10 years documenting the many problems and assumptions that lead to incorrect condom use -- and it's now designing and testing a brief self-guided, home-based intervention as a way to help people avoid these problems.

"Most people don't learn how to use them correctly," said William L. Yarber, senior director of RCAP. "It's something they want to do -- get them, use them at the time of the sexual episode -- but it's more of an afterthought. Condom use should be like practicing for a sporting event or a musical event; the practice needs to be done."

The other core members of CURT are Richard A. Crosby, College of Public Health, University of Kentucky; Cynthia A. Graham, Department of Psychology, Brunel University, England; and Robin R. Milhausen, Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition, University of Guelph, Canada.

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Press release from Indiana University