Psychometric Properties and Factor Analysis of Sexual Attitudes Scale for Couples

Backgrounds: Developing a valid and reliable scale that allows a evaluation of sexual attitudes and develop a proper sexual educational program is necessary. The present study was designed to develop and psychometric evaluation of the sexual attitudes scale for couples.Material and Method : An study was conducted in two phases; in the first, in order to develop a questionnaire an item pool was generated on sexual attitudes through focus group discussions and individual interviews. second phase, the psychometric properties of the questionnaire were examined. For this purpose, In the face validity, content validity as well as construct validity were conducted. Reliability was assessed by the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient to assess internal consistency and test-retest reliability.Result: In the first phase an item pool with 43questions. In the second phase, the number of final items reduced to 34 items of sexual attitudes , through exploratory factor analysis (EFA). six factors for sexual attitudes identified by EFA, including factor 1(sexual satisfaction) with 9 items, factor 2(negotiation of sexual issues between spouse) with 8 items, factor 3 (the importance of sex in life) with 6 items, factor 4 (sexual concerns) with 6 items, factor 5 (initiation of sex by the woman) with 3 items and factor 6(shared pleasure of sex) with 2 items The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was 0.81. The test- retest correlations for sexual attitude was 0.82.Conclusion: The findings suggest that the Sexual Attitudes Scale for Couples is a valid and reliable scale. Further studies are needed to establish stronger psychometric properties for the questionnaire