Teaching Condom Use Skills: Practice Is Superior to Observation

ABSTRACT

Men exposed to a condom skills practice exercise were hypothesized to perform better on condom skills measures than those exposed only to a demonstration or to no intervention. As part of a larger National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Clinical Trials Network HIV Prevention protocol, men in substance abuse treatment were administered male and female condom use skills measures (MCUS, FCUS) at preintervention, 2 weeks, 3 months, and 6 months postintervention. The MCUS and FCUS scores were compared for 3 intervention exposure groups (demonstration only [DO, n = 149], demonstration plus practice [D+P; n = 112], attended no sessions [NS, n = 139]) across the 4 assessment time points using a mixed effects linear regression model. There is a statistically significant intervention group-by-time effect (P < .0001) for both the MCUS and FCUS. Post hoc, pairwise linear trends across time indicated that for both the MCUS and the FCUS, the D+P group is significantly superior to the DO group and the NS group.

KEYWORDS:

• Condom skills
• HIV prevention
• teaching methods

This work was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (grant 1 U10DA13714-01; Dennis Donovan, Principal Investigator). The authors wish to thank the CTN protocols 0018 and 0019 lead node teams, the 23 CTN Regional Research and Training Center investigators and site PIs, the 15 site coordinators, and the 21 research assistants who worked on this project.

Notes

^aMore NS participants married compared to DO (= 6.31, P = .012).

^bMore NS participants in psychosocial outpatient compare to D+P (= 6.49, P = .011).