Effects of sexual education mobile applications on men’s sexual awareness and satisfaction: A randomized controlled trial

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Sexual education programs can improve sexual awareness and satisfaction. Yet, sex education is ignored in developing countries. Under such circumstances, we have used IT tools to improve sexual education.

OBJECTIVE: In this article, we used a mobile application (mHealth) to impart sex education.

Methods: A randomized controlled trial was held, in which participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups: The control group, with 25 participants, which received only counseling from sex therapists, and the intervention group, with 25 participants, which received the mobile application system in addition to counseling from sex therapists. Participants were persons referred to sex therapists at a clinic. In each group, sexual satisfaction and awareness were evaluated. We measured sexual satisfaction with the help of the Larson questionnaire and sexual awareness by the Ann Hooper questionnaire.

Results: Our data demonstrated that sexual satisfaction was not statistically significant (P=0.44), but awareness showed statistically significant differences (P=0.007) in the intervention vs. the control group. Also, the mean in both groups had statistically significant differences before and after the intervention (P=0.001).

Conclusion: Our results showed that mobile applications can improve sexual awareness but cannot affect sexual satisfaction in the short term.

Trial Registration: The clinical trial was registered with the Iranian Registry of Clinical Trials (IRCT) under registration ID:  IRCT2016110130640N1