Condom Use for Disease Prevention Among Unmarried

The Study For the 1988 NSFG, a household-based national survey, 8,450 women aged 15–44 participated in personal interviews in their homes; 5,359 of these women were reinterviewed in a 1990 telephone survey.4 Half of the respondents (2,672) to the follow-up survey were randomly assigned to a subsample that asked detailed questions related to STDs and HIV. Of these women, 932 were not married or in a common-law union and were sexually experienced; this group (of whom 64% reported having had intercourse in the month before the interview) was the focus of our analysis. With regard to condom use for disease prevention, respondents in the subsample were specifically asked whether, during the last three months in which they were having intercourse, they and their partners had used condoms to avoid getting diseases such as genital herpes, gonorrhea and AIDS. If so, they were asked whether they had used condoms for this reason every time they had intercourse, Condom Use for Disease Prevention Among Unmarried U.S. Women