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Summer 2006 Newsletter / Volume 7, Issue 4

HIV Prevention News

About Women

Addressing the other side of the condom-use equation, Lam and Barnhart (2006) conducted a Web-based survey of 181 heterosexually active Chinese and Filipina American women attending California universities to assess condom negotiation strategies, categorized dichotomously as verbal/nonverbal and direct/indirect.

Verbal-direct ... messages ... are verbal in nature and explicit in their request for condom use (e.g., telling partner to use condom). Verbal-indirect ... messages ... are verbal in nature but are more subtle in their request for condom use (e.g., dropping hint to partner that so-and-so just got pregnant). Nonverbal-direct strategies are those that are not verbal yet are direct in their message to use a condom (e.g., placing condom in view of partner). Nonverbal-indirect ... strategies ... are not verbal and are subtle in their message to use a condom (e.g., placing safer sex pamphlet in view of partner). (p. 73)

Lam and Barnhart found that "Asian women with non-Asian partners were more likely to use nonverbal-direct strategies than those with Asian partners. Asian women with older partners were less likely to use verbal strategies … than those with same-age partners" (p. 68). As these investigators see it, this study "fills a critical gap in the condom negotiation literature, suggesting that Asian women do not use the same condom negotiation ... [strategy] irrespective of a sexual partner's characteristics. Obtaining information such as partner ethnicity and age can help … [in] teach[ing] more culturally sensitive sexual communication strategies to clients across different types of relationships" (p. 79).

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