HOW ACCURATE IS MALE RECALL OF REPRODUCTIVE INFORMATION

The purpose of this study was to determine how well men recall reprodu ctive information, By using a questionnaire, the authors surveyed men who had undergone orchiopexy for undescended testes and a group of mat ched control men, all of whom had had surgery at the Children's Hospit al of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (n = 77), and their spous es. Subjects were a random subset of a larger(n = 1,212) male fertilit y study, which has been ongoing since 1992. In 1994, the spouses of me n who participated in the study completed a short telephone survey tha t contained questions previously asked of their partners, Pearson corr elations and kappa statistics were calculated to evaluate the accuracy of male recall of reproductive information. For the continuous measur es, such as time to conception and frequency of intercourse, the corre lations were high to moderate (r = 0.84 (p < 0.001) and r = 0.45 (p < 0.001), respectively), Agreement between the men and their spouses on the majority of bivariate (yes/no) questions, such as those concerning the use of birth control, as measured by the kappa statistic, was mod erate to very good (kappa ranged from 0.14 to 0.69). Statistics were s imilar for formerly cryptorchid and control men. Male participants' re sponses to questions about their reproductive histories were accurate as compared with the responses given by their spouses. In this sample from a large cohort study, men appeared to recall reproductive informa tion with acceptable accuracy.