Hands-on is better than look-on: condom use.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: To compare knowledge about condoms, attitude towards condom use and skill in condom application between the experimental group who received hands-on and the control group who had look-on demonstrations of condom application onto the penile model of third year male primary vocational students. METHOD: Self administered questionnaire was used to collect data about knowledge and attitude. Skill was separately evaluated by a skill evaluation form. Pretest and posttest of knowledge, attitude and skill were done separately at 2 week intervals in the same subjects. The pretest and posttest scores were expressed as the mean and standard deviation. Statistic analysis used unpaired t-test for comparing scores between the two groups using SPSS. RESULTS: Comparison of pretest with pretest, posttest with posttest and the different mean score of posttest with pretest between the two groups of knowledge and attitude about condoms were not significantly different in both groups but the skill in condom application score was significantly different (p-value < 0.001). However, the skill score increased in the experimental group more than in the control group. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggested that condom application skill increased with the hands-on than look-on instructional model. It was concluded that hands-on should be used to improve skill to prevent condom user failure and nonuse.