In collaboration with Payame Noor University and Iranian Health Psychology Association

Document Type : Scientific Research

Author

Professor, Department of Psychology, Payame Noor University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Objective: Sexual health is recognized as one of the important components of human rights in the international community and every human has the right to achieve the highest level of sexual health. Most of the diseases and disorders all over the world are caused by not paying enough attention to sexual health. In this regard, one of the important and effective actions is the design and construction of authentic and localized tools. One of reasons that highlight the applied necessity of this research is the application of this instrument by Iranian couple therapists for detection of clients` strengths and weakness regarding to sexual-marital dimensions. Detection of these dimensions by this scale pave the way for interventional researches in the field of improvement of Iranian marital relationships. Therefore, it is complete necessary to investigate sexual issues even without existence of special disorder in sexual relationships for promotion of quality of couples relationship and prevention of occurrence of disorder in the field of sexual and marital issues. Thus, this study was designed to investigate the construction, validation and standardization of Iranian Sexual-Marital Relationships Quality Scale. Method: The present study was a descriptive correlational study. After scale construction, this research investigated in two separate studies. Statistical population was composed of all volunteer and convenient couples resident in Tehran city. Enter circumstances to sample was included passing at least on year of marital life, participants use of vaginal intercourse in sexual relations, no infection to chronic diseases including diabetes, to be literate, without drug abuse, no existence of acute mental problems and receiving psychological treatments and presenting written consent. Designing and constructing of research was done in three phases. In the first phase, after determining and designing scale subject, definitions of it`s fields represented and sexual-marital relationships investigated. According to theoretical studies and internal and external literature reviews, quality of sextual relations were defined into eight components. In the second phase, according to theoretical bases and professions comments, ultimately 90 items questionnaire was designed and give to experts. In order to investigate of  scale content validity, the list of items made available to psychologists and sexual psychologists specialists. Items that received 80% specialists confirmation, remained in list and other items that refused or don`t confirm were deleted. In the third phase, scale conducted on the number of married students and some items were deleted because of weak correlation coefficient with other items. Finally, final scale with 40 items and five-point Likert scale constructed and investigated for measuring quality of sexual-marital in Iranian couples population. Data were analyzed using Cronbach's alpha, exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis with the help of SPSS-22 and LISREL-8.5 software. Results: In the first study, average age of women and men was respectively 34/26 and 40/75 and average length of marriage was 12 years. In the second study, average age of women and men was respectively 34/97 and 36/29 and length of marriage was 7/5 years. Most of participants in every two studies had Bachelor`s degree and most of women were housekeeper and most of men had freelance job. The results showed that the reliability coefficient of the questionnaire using Cronbach's alpha has a desirable fit for the whole scale and each of the factors. In addition, exploratory factor analysis revealed six factors including acquaintance to anatomy and sexual cycles, effective problem solving and communication, dysfunctional beliefs and negative self-talk, emotional-sexual discourse and intimacy, skills in touching non-sexual areas and improving sexual skills that altogether explained 54.6% of the total variance. Confirmatory factor analysis showed an acceptable fitness in determining the factors. Conclusion: The present study showed that the instrument designed in Iranian samples has sufficient reliability, validity and fitness. Therefore, it is recommended that this instrument can be used to measure the quality of sexual-marital relationships in researches and therapeutic interventions.

Keywords

Main Subjects

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