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. 2018 Oct 19;18(1):111.
doi: 10.1186/s12874-018-0566-y.

Can men be trusted in population-based surveys to report couples' medical care for infertility?

Soraya Belgherbi  1 , Elise de La Rochebrochard  2   3
Affiliations

Can men be trusted in population-based surveys to report couples' medical care for infertility?

Soraya Belgherbi et al. BMC Med Res Methodol. .

Abstract

Background: Men are usually excluded from surveys on reproductive health as some works have cast doubts on their ability to accurately report information on reproduction. Recent papers challenged this viewpoint, arguing that the quality of men's reports depends strongly on use of an appropriate study design. We aimed to explore the relevance of evaluating couples' use of medical care for infertility based on men's interviews in a population-based survey.

Methods: The study was based on the last French sexual and reproductive health study (Fecond) conducted by phone interviews among a population-based sample of 2863 men and 4629 women aged 20-49 years.

Results: Among respondents who had ever tried to have a child, the use of infertility medical care by couples (i.e. by the respondents and/or their partners) within the previous 15 years was 16% (95%CI 14 to 18%) based on men's reports and 17% (95%CI 15 to 18%) based on women's reports (p = 0.43). Men's and women's reports were remarkably concordant on most items (infertility duration, treatment). The main discrepancy concerned male medical checkup, which was reported much more often by male respondents than female respondents (86% vs. 57%, p < 0.001 for sperm analysis, 56% vs. 27%, p < 0.001 for male genital examination).

Conclusions: It is time to trust men to report couples' infertility medical care in reproductive surveys, as they provide information remarkably concordant with that provided by women. Conversely, women may poorly report the infertility checkups of their male partner.

Keywords: Assisted reproductive technologies; Female; France; Infertility; Male; Respondents; Survey methodology.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The Fecond survey received institutional review board approval from the French Data Protection Authority (authorization CNIL no. 2009–674). Participants gave verbal consent following the usual French ethical procedure for surveys based on voluntary phone interviews. The French Authority (CNIL) authorized interviews of minor teenagers aged 15–17 on their sexual and reproductive life based on their own verbal consent. The interviews could be carried out without requesting parental consent as the age of sexual consent is 15 years according to French law [French Penal Code, article 227–25 with open access at https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/ and French Constitutional Court’s Decision n°2011–222 QPC – 17 February 2012 with open access at www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr].

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Flow chart of sampling methodology and selection of the study population
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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