Rather than ask, the researchers handed 500 couples in five countries a stopwatch and asked them to start it at penetration and stop it at ejaculation, at home, over four weeks. The median came to 5.4 minutes. The full range ran from 33 seconds to 44 minutes.
The distribution is heavily skewed, which is why the median is the honest figure and the average is not. The study also found no relationship with circumcision status and only a weak one with age — and, notably, that the Turkish couples in the sample were markedly quicker than the other four countries.
