Validation of holding time, a novel tool to assess control over ejaculation in males: A pilot study

Premature ejaculation (PE) is considered as a disorder of perceived loss of ejaculatory control. However, we cannot objectively estimate ejaculatory control due to the absence of an objective tool to measure it. Hence, we designed a pilot study to validate holding time (HoT), a novel objective tool, hypothesized by us, to measure ejaculatory control in men. The construct validity of this tool to differentiate premature ejaculators from normal ejaculators was also assessed in our sample. The study sample had 10 healthy, sexually active normal ejaculators, and 10 premature ejaculators, who volunteered to participate in the study conducted from May 2020 to April 2021. The mean HoT in normal ejaculators was 120.2 ± 31.7 s and the same in premature ejaculators was 32.9 ± 12.9 s. Both the normal (r = 0.983) as well as premature ejaculators (r = 0.839) had good test-retest reliability. The construct validity of HoT to diagnose PE was good with 90% sensitivity, 91% specificity, 63.8% positive predictive value, and 98.1% negative predictive value to diagnose PE when compared with diagnosis by a standard tool. It could be concluded that HoT successfully measured ejaculatory control in men and differentiated normal ejaculators from the premature ejaculators in the sample studied.