ABSTRACT
As of mid-1996, 121 empirical studies had been conducted investigating the psychosocial correlates of heterosexual condom use, producing 660 correlations involving 44 variables (Sheeran, Abraham, & Orbell, 1999). A reasonable question to ask is: What have all these studies told us about those correlates? Given that not all the results of the studies investigating a particular correlate were consistent—some supported the existence of a relationship with condom use, others did not—another reasonable question is: What caused these inconsistencies? An integrative literature review attempts to answer questions such as these by (a) collecting all of the available information on a topic, (b) organizing it to show the current state of knowledge on the topic, and (c) identifying gaps in knowledge that need to be filled.
