ABSTRACT
Background: Women's sexual well-being has been the center of attention in the field of sexology. Study of sexual behavior and investigating its predictors are important for women's health promotion. This study aimed to explore the components of women's sexual behaviors and their possible associations with demographic variables
Materials and Methods: This study was a cross-sectional study [descriptive and analytic] that was conducted in Kashan city, Iran. A National Sexual Behavior Assessment Questionnaire was completed by 500 women of 15 to 49 who referred to the public health centers. To analyze the data, R software was used, ANOVA or Kruskal-Wallis [for parametric or nonparametric data, respectively] were used to compare outcomes among different groups. In order to evaluate the correlation between the subscales, the Pearson correlation coefficient was used
Results: From all participants, 31.8% obtained high scores in the sexual capacity, 21.2% had high scores in sexual motivation and 0.2% had high scores in sexual function. In sexual script component, 86.2% of women who held traditional beliefs toward sexual behaviors; the majority [91.5%] of women believed in mutual and relational sexuality, 83.4% believed in androcentricity [male-dominated sexuality]. Pearson correlation test showed a significant positive correlation between sexual capacity, motivation, function and sexual script. Linear Regression model showed that sexual capacity is associated with women's education and age of her spouse. Sexual function and sexual motivation were significantly associated with the age of subjects' spouses
Conclusion: In this study, subjects had low scores in sexual performance while higher scores were achieved in sexual capacity and motivation. This discrepancy can be attributed to the role of sexual scripts dominating the participants' sexual interactions in this study. We suggest gender-specific and culturally-sensitive education should become a part of women's health programs in Iran
ABSTRACT
Background: delivery of sexual health services rely on rigorous facts extracted from surveys, but often those facts cannot be available due to the lack of culturallysensitive questionnaires
Objective: our aim was to show the validity and reliability of the Persian version of the Acquisition of Sexual Information Test [ASIT], a measure selected due to its assemblages with Iranian culture
Materials and Methods: forward-backward procedure was applied to translate the questionnaire. Cross-sectional study was carried out and psychometric properties of the Iranian version were tested in a thirty sample of reproductive-age women. Face validity was assessed by qualitative and quantitative methods. Content validity was also assessed by calculating two quantitative indicators as content validity index [CVI] and content validity ratio [CVR]. Reliability was assessed by test-retest analyses
Results: impact score was 1.5, the majority of participants [83.3%] stated that the overall level of questionnaire was high but some of the questions were irrelevant to sexual knowledge. Many questions [90%] gained a CVR less than 0.56, and all of them gained CVIs lower than 0.7. Correlation in test-retest reliability was 0.85
Conclusion: sexual knowledge questionnaire seems to be culturally inappropriate for Iranian women. Although, we need survey data for assessing the evidence-based needs for sexual health and best practice, but the questions addressing various dimensions of sexuality must be culturally sensitive, comprehensive and appropriate. Our findings suggest that ASIT as a well-known measure should be used in Iranian population with caution