A report released late last month by Trojan, the popular condom producer, ranked the university No. 63 out of 139 colleges and universities in sexual health in its third-annual Sexual Health Report Card. The university dropped seven spots since last year.
The purpose of the study was to look at how effectively health centers provide students with information regarding their sexual health, said Bert Sperling, who founded Sperling’s BestPlaces, the company hired by Trojan to conduct the study.
Sperling, who said the company is not made of “medical researchers or health experts” and isn’t trying to “say what kids should and shouldn’t do,” said the university’s ranking was about average. However, university officials and students said they found the rankings confusing and not entirely accurate.
This year, the sexual health of a school was determined by 13 categories, such as students’ opinions of their school’s health center, the functionality of the health center’s website and whether contraceptives, condoms and STD and HIV testing are available. In 2007, the rankings were based on 11 categories, and in 2006, only seven categories were used to determine a school’s sexual health.
But the constant switches in criteria make the rankings hard to judge, said Alli Matson, the University Health Center’s sexual health program coordinator.
“[Trojan] changes the evaluation criteria each year, so there is no way to tell if [the health center] improved over time,” Matson wrote in an e-mail.
The university fell from No. 56 in 2007; the year before, it was ranked No. 61.
But students said they found the entire ranking system confusing and somewhat irrelevant.
“It’s kind of weird Trojan is even ranking schools for that,” said Megan Thorne, a junior psychology major. “That doesn’t really sound like a legitimate ranking.”
Melissa Thompson, a junior English major, agreed.
“It seems like Trojan has a different agenda,” Thompson said. “It just seems like they want us to buy their condoms.”
Sperling defended the company, saying he thought Trojan released the study to “help create a dialogue about healthy sexual behavior.”
Matson, however, was not too concerned with the ranking.
“The ranking doesn’t really mean anything,” Matson said. “It’s one group’s interpretation of what they feel that we offer. If it were a valid and reliable study, it would have an impact. But it isn’t, and so it doesn’t.
“Frankly, the printing of this story in The Diamondback will have more of an impact on the campus than the Trojan report card will,” she said.
No interviews were conducted with any workers at the health center during the study, a problem health center officials said they also encountered in 2006. Matson said her only involvement with the Trojan study was an entry she submitted online that detailed health center services.
Questionnaires for students were sent to health centers across the country, and ads on Facebook encouraged students to fill them out. Nine thousand students nationwise filled out questionnaires, and 119 students at this university responded to the Facebook ad, Sperling said.
Similar to past years, a large component of this year’s judging was the website of the health centers. The health center has made a push to improve its website in the past years because of the study, Matson said.
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