What does it mean when the statistics say that condoms are, at best, 98% effective.
It sounds like 1/50 times a condom is used, it won’t prevent pregnancy. But this doesn’t seem right because those stats wouldn’t be worth the risk.
In: 1235
So the contraceptive efficiency is measured with a thing called Pearl index. It’s basically asking a couple what method they use, and following up whether they get pregnant within a year. It’s a very very very flawed measurement methodology.
One obvious problem is that its totally self report based. And people lie. Maybe they are ashamed or just forget to mention that at this one time they didn’t put on the condom. Some people say “we use it as intended” but they in fact put it on after “a little bit going in without, just for the feeling”.
Another obvious problem is that people have different amount of sex. Getting pregnant is proportional to sex. The measurement says “one year follow up”, but how many times did you have sex in that year? 20? 100? 200? Maybe there’s an unknown relationship between methods and number of sex, let’s say condom users have an average of 150, calendar users have 50. If they have the same amount of children (made up number) in a year, condom is still 3x better.
Condom, if used properly, is a very safe contraceptive method, and the Pearl index is very misleading here.
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