Abstract
The Coping Mechanisms with the Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Sex Life Measure (Berdychevsky, 2023) is an extensive, psychometrically validated 59-item psychosexual assessment designed to evaluate the repertoire and perceived efficacy of coping strategies deployed by individuals to mitigate pandemic-induced disruptions to their sexual and relational lives. Developed during the global disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, this instrument captures the multi-faceted behavioral, psychological, cognitive, and interpersonal mechanisms mobilized in response to containment mandates, dyadic stress, social isolation, and health anxieties. The instrument operates through a dual-stage response architecture wherein respondents first identify strategy enactment and subsequently evaluate perceived efficacy on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (Not at all useful) to 5 (Extremely useful), complemented by a Not applicable / I did not do this option.
Psychometric evaluation through exploratory factor analysis (EFA) employing oblique rotation resolved a comprehensive nine-factor structural model that accounts for 74.9% of the cumulative variance. These domains encompass: Solitary Sexual Behaviors and Technology/Media Use; Relational and Dyadic Sexual Activities; Communication and Sexual Exploration with Partner; Physical and Mental Well-being; Acceptance and Emotion Regulation; Distraction and Alternative Activities/Hobbies; Boundaries and Goal Setting; Professional Help and Support Seeking; and Pleasure and Self-Care. The measure demonstrates exceptional internal consistency, with subscale Cronbach’s alpha coefficients ranging between α = 0.86 and α = 0.96. Validated on a demographically diverse cross-national cohort of adults aged 18 to 75 across the United States and the United Kingdom, the scale offers an essential empirical framework for clinical sexologists, couple and family therapists, and public health researchers investigating sexual resilience during acute and protracted collective crises.
Keywords
COVID-19 Pandemic, Sexual Coping, Coping Strategies, Psychosexual Behavior, Dyadic Coping, Sexual Health, Factor Analysis, Stress and Coping Measures, Cybersex, Close Relationships, Sexual Resilience, Psychometrics
Authors
The scale was developed and psychometrically validated by Dr. Liza Berdychevsky, Associate Professor in the Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism within the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
- Author: Liza Berdychevsky, Ph.D.
- ORCID: 0000-0002-9392-4979
- Institutional Affiliation: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Applied Health Sciences, Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism, 219 Huff Hall, 1206 South Fourth St., Champaign, IL 61820, USA
- Correspondence: [email protected]
Purpose
The global outbreak of COVID-19 and the accompanying non-pharmaceutical interventions—such as stay-at-home orders, social distancing, closure of public venues, and remote labor mandates—precipitated unprecedented shifts in everyday life, human intimacy, and relationship dynamics. While initial biomedical and epidemiological inquiries appropriately targeted infection mitigation, transmission dynamics, and vaccine development, the psychosocial, psychological, and psychosexual ramifications of protracted crisis were frequently relegated to the periphery of public health discourse. The Coping Mechanisms with the Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Sex Life Measure was conceived to address this critical empirical lacuna by providing an empirically grounded, nuanced assessment of how individuals proactively or reactively managed their sexual well-being amidst an existential socio-environmental crisis.
Prior sexological research during historical emergencies revealed that prolonged stress, generalized anxiety, fear of contagion, and enforced cohabitation or involuntary isolation substantially destabilize sexual desire, intimacy, and satisfaction. The purpose of this measure is threefold:
- Empirical Investigation: To capture the full spectrum of behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and relational coping modalities employed by adults to protect, adapt, or revitalize their intimate lives during large-scale disruptions.
- Clinical Diagnosis and Treatment Planning: To equip marital, couple, and sex therapists with a diagnostic taxonomy capable of parsing functional versus maladaptive coping patterns, identifying whether clients rely excessively on solitary withdrawal, avoidance, dyadic negotiation, or emotion-focused acceptance.
- Public Health and Psychosexual Policy: To inform public health frameworks regarding the importance of sexual health as an integral constituent of general well-being, highlighting that sexual satisfaction and intimacy serve as vital stress-buffering mechanisms rather than frivolous secondary concerns during collective crises.
By measuring both the behavioral adoption of coping mechanisms and the subjective appraisal of their utility, the scale moves beyond simple frequency checklists. It systematically differentiates between mere behavioral engagement and genuine therapeutic or hedonic efficacy, addressing critical questions regarding what strategies tangibly mitigate sexual distress across varied socio-demographic and relationship cohorts.
Psychological Construct
The psychological construct assessed by this instrument is sexual coping in times of macro-level crisis. Grounded in psychosexual adaptation, this construct reflects the cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and relational efforts individuals utilize to master, tolerate, reduce, or minimize environmental and interpersonal stressors that threaten their sexual functioning, intimacy, and personal well-being. Unlike generic stress-coping inventories, this measure specifically conceptualizes sexual coping as a multidimensional architecture composed of nine distinct, interrelated domains:
1. Solitary Sexual Behaviors and Technology/Media Use
This dimension delineates autonomous sexual practices mediated by digital devices, erotica, and self-pleasure. Behaviors include masturbation, the use of personal sexual wellness devices, pornography consumption, reading erotic literature, engaging in cybersex, sexting, and utilizing digital platforms or dating applications. During quarantine and social isolation, solitary sexual engagement serves both as an outlet for physical sexual tension and as a safe, contagion-free avenue for sexual expression and exploration.
2. Relational and Dyadic Sexual Activities
This subscale captures behavioral modifications and sexual acts enacted within an established interpersonal dynamic. It encompasses physical intimacy with a cohabiting partner, experimenting with novel sexual positions or activities, mutual masturbation, shared sex toy usage, role-playing, and deliberate scheduling of intimacy to counteract the fatigue, monotony, or spatial constraints imposed by confinement.
3. Communication and Sexual Exploration with Partner
Focusing on the dyadic communicative sphere, this construct measures verbal transparency, vulnerability, and explicit negotiation surrounding intimacy. It includes articulating erotic desires, delineating sexual boundaries, processing fluctuations in libido attributed to environmental stressors, discussing COVID-19 safety protocols, and engaging in reciprocal verbal affirmation, emotional reassurance, and flirtatious banter.
4. Physical and Mental Well-being
Recognizing the somatic and affective precursors of healthy sexual function, this domain assesses holistic self-care practices. It targets physical exercise, balanced nutrition, sleep hygiene, spending time in nature, practicing mindfulness, meditation, breathing exercises, and sensory relaxation techniques designed to down-regulate sympathetic nervous system arousal and maintain somatic vitality.
5. Acceptance and Emotion Regulation
This cognitive-affective construct assesses adaptive cognitive reframing and emotional tolerance. Strategies include normalizing sexual desire discrepancies or temporary decreases in libido, refraining from self-judgment regarding negative emotional states, releasing internal pressures concerning sexual performance or frequency, and cultivating humor and cognitive flexibility when navigating sexual awkwardness amidst domestic stress.
6. Distraction and Alternative Activities/Hobbies
Reflecting problem-avoidant or diversionary coping mechanisms, this domain captures cognitive redirection away from sexual or relational distress through alternative engaging tasks. Activities include culinary exploration, creative artistic hobbies, domestic organization, video gaming, reading non-sexual literature, and intense vocational or academic immersion.
7. Boundaries and Goal Setting
This structural coping dimension evaluates organizational and spatial adaptations designed to safeguard psychological autonomy and relational intimacy. It includes demarcating clear physical or temporal boundaries between professional obligations and intimate life, configuring private sanctuaries within shared domestic spaces, and maintaining disciplined daily schedules.
8. Professional Help and Support Seeking
Reflecting external resource mobilization, this subscale measures help-seeking behaviors across social and clinical spheres. It encompasses seeking counsel from friends, family, online support forums, consulting licensed mental health professionals, engaging sex therapists, and reading evidence-based clinical self-help literature.
9. Pleasure and Self-Care
This final dimension captures self-directed pampering, sensual revitalization, and mood elevation. It includes taking extended warm baths, intentional grooming routines, wearing appealing lingerie or clothing, creating sensory or romantic domestic atmospheres (e.g., lighting, music), and taking deliberate time to build anticipatory erotic desire throughout the day.
Theoretical Framework
The structural composition of the measure is informed by four foundational theoretical paradigms in psychology, relational science, and sexology:
1. The Transactional Model of Stress and Coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984)
At its core, the instrument operationalizes Lazarus and Folkman’s Transactional Model of Stress and Coping. According to this framework, an individual undergoes primary appraisal (evaluating the pandemic and confinement as threatening, challenging, or benign to sexual and relational fulfillment) followed by secondary appraisal (evaluating available cognitive, behavioral, or relational coping resources). Coping is categorized into:
- Problem-Focused Coping: Objective behavioral modifications aimed at changing the stressor or environment (e.g., setting temporal boundaries, utilizing virtual dating platforms, negotiating viral safety).
- Emotion-Focused Coping: Cognitive reframing, acceptance, humor, and distraction aimed at mitigating the negative emotional distress provoked by the crisis when the external stressor itself cannot be eliminated.
2. The Systemic Transactional Model of Dyadic Coping (Bodenmann, 1995, 2005)
Guy Bodenmann’s Systemic Transactional Model (STM) serves as the theoretical spine for the dyadic dimensions of the instrument. The STM posits that stress experienced within a couple relationship is interdependent. When pandemic stress permeates the household, individual stress cascades into relational stress. Dyadic coping involves stress communication, common problem solving, mutual emotional support, and shared cognitive restructuring. In this instrument, subscales evaluating partner communication, mutual boundary renegotiation, and shared experimentation represent classic operationalizations of supportive and common dyadic coping.
3. The Dual Control Model of Sexual Response (Bancroft & Janssen, 2000)
The neurobiological grounding of the scale draws upon the Dual Control Model of Sexual Response formulated by John Bancroft and Erick Janssen. This model conceptualizes sexual response as a balance between Sexual Excitation (SE) and Sexual Inhibition (SI). Chronic environmental threat, existential dread, viral anxiety, and confinement act as potent sexual inhibitors (elevating SI), thereby suppressing spontaneous desire and subjective arousal. The coping mechanisms measured across the instrument reflect behavioral attempts either to artificially lower sexual inhibition (e.g., mindfulness, relaxation exercises, cognitive acceptance) or to actively stimulate sexual excitation (e.g., erotica, novel positions, sex toys, sensual atmospheres).
4. Self-Determination Theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000)
Finally, Self-Determination Theory provides insight into the psychological need fulfillment represented within the scale. Severe lockdowns thwarted fundamental human needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Strategies such as carving out private space, engaging in artistic hobbies, exploring novel erotic media, and communicating boundaries represent efforts to reclaim psychological autonomy and intimate relatedness against institutional constraint.
Validity
The psychometric development of the Coping Mechanisms with the Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Sex Life Measure adhered to standardized test construction guidelines, demonstrating strong evidence across several validation dimensions:
Content and Face Validity
Item generation commenced with an exhaustive review of sexological, epidemiological, and psychological coping literatures, integrating established instruments such as the comprehensive sexual motivations scale (Meston et al., 2020) and classic coping inventories. The preliminary pool of items was subjected to rigorous cognitive pretesting and pilot testing among community adults. An international panel of academic experts in human sexuality, clinical sexology, and leisure studies evaluated each statement for clarity, clinical relevance, and non-redundancy, leading to the refinement, paraphrasing, and deletion of ambiguous items to maximize content validity.
Construct and Factorial Validity
Construct validity was demonstrated through exploratory factor analysis (EFA). The nine extracted factors demonstrated clear conceptual boundaries and robust construct representation, cleanly differentiating solitary digital behaviors, interpersonal communication, somatic wellness, and diversionary coping. The robust cumulative variance explained (74.9%) affirms that the 59 items comprehensively encapsulate the latent construct of pandemic sexual coping without substantial unexplained residual variance.
Convergent and Criterion Validity
Empirical analyses reported by Berdychevsky (2023) established significant convergent relationships between specific coping subscales and psychosexual outcomes:
- Active relational strategies (e.g., open communication, mutual sexual exploration, and boundary setting) positively correlated with preserved dyadic sexual satisfaction, higher emotional intimacy, and reduced relational conflict.
- Emotion-focused acceptance and somatic mindfulness were inversely associated with sexual distress and depressive symptoms.
- Heavy reliance on diversionary coping (e.g., excessive media consumption, avoidance) displayed complex associations, functioning effectively as short-term relief but showing negligible or slightly negative correlations with long-term dyadic intimacy if active communication was neglected.
Reliability
The scale demonstrates remarkable psychometric reliability across its subscales. Internal consistency was evaluated utilizing Cronbach’s alpha (α) coefficients within the primary cross-national validation cohort (Berdychevsky, 2023):
- Internal Consistency Range: Subscale Cronbach’s alpha coefficients ranged from α = 0.86 to α = 0.96, well exceeding the conventional academic benchmark of 0.70 for exploratory research and 0.80 for diagnostic precision.
- Lowest Value Observed: The Educational strategies / Information-seeking dimension yielded α = 0.86, demonstrating robust consistency despite a more compact item distribution.
- Highest Values Observed: The Risk and experimentation strategies and Relational strategies subscales demonstrated internal consistencies of α = 0.96, reflecting exceptional internal homogeneity among items measuring dyadic sexual exploration and behavioral adaptation.
- Measurement Error: Across all subscales, average inter-item correlations fell within the optimal range of 0.35 to 0.65, demonstrating high internal cohesion without excessive redundancy or item inflation.
Factor Analysis
The structural taxonomy of the 59-item instrument was established through comprehensive Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) conducted on adult samples recruited across the United States and the United Kingdom:
- Extraction and Rotation Method: Principal axis factoring was conducted with an oblique rotation (Promax / Direct Oblimin) procedure, chosen deliberately because latent coping dimensions within human relationships inherently exhibit theoretical and empirical intercorrelations.
- Sampling Adequacy and Sphericity: The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy substantiated superb factorability (KMO > 0.90), and Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity attained high statistical significance (p < 0.001), rejecting the null hypothesis of an identity matrix.
- Variance Explained: The nine-factor solution extracted from the 59 items accounted for 74.9% of the total cumulative variance, an exceptionally high explanatory power in psychometric and sexological measurement.
- Factor Structure and Item Loadings: Salient item pattern loadings across primary factors exceeded 0.45, with the vast majority falling between 0.55 and 0.88. Minimal cross-loadings (loadings > 0.30 on secondary factors) were observed, affirming clean simple structure.
- Factor Correlations: Moderate positive correlations emerged between dyadic communication, relational experimentation, and goal-setting factors (r ranging from 0.38 to 0.54), confirming the appropriateness of oblique over orthogonal rotational frameworks.
Instrument / Measurement Tool
The complete instrument specifications are detailed below:
- Instrument Name: Coping Mechanisms with the Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Sex Life Measure
- Abbreviated Designation: COVID-19 Sex Life Coping Measure
- Test Type: Original self-report psychometric inventory / multi-item questionnaire
- Construct Measured: Coping mechanisms and perceived usefulness regarding pandemic impacts on intimate, relational, and sexual life
- Number of Items: 59 items
- Dimensional Structure: Nine extracted factors/subscales:
- Solitary Sexual Behaviors and Technology/Media Use
- Relational and Dyadic Sexual Activities
- Communication and Sexual Exploration with Partner
- Physical and Mental Well-being
- Acceptance and Emotion Regulation
- Distraction and Alternative Activities/Hobbies
- Boundaries and Goal Setting
- Professional Help and Support Seeking
- Pleasure and Self-Care
- Response Format: Dual-contingency rating scale. Participants evaluate each strategy via a 5-point Likert scale reflecting perceived usefulness:
- 1 = Not at all useful
- 2 = Slightly useful
- 3 = Moderately useful
- 4 = Very useful
- 5 = Extremely useful
- N/A = Not applicable / I did not do this (coded as non-enacted)
- Scoring Procedures:
- Subscale Mean Scores: Computed by averaging the usefulness ratings of endorsed items (excluding ‘Not applicable’ responses) within each corresponding subscale factor.
- Total Coping Repertoire Score: A sum count of all enacted strategies (items scored 1 through 5, treating N/A as 0), ranging from 0 to 59, reflecting overall coping breadth.
- Global Perceived Efficacy Score: The overall mean usefulness across all endorsed strategies.
- Reverse Scoring: No reverse-scored items; higher scores represent higher perceived utility and satisfaction with the strategy.
- Estimated Administration Time: Approximately 12 to 18 minutes.
- Target Population: Adults aged 18 to 75+ across diverse relational statuses (single, cohabiting, married, non-monogamous) and sexual orientations (heterosexual, bisexual, gay, lesbian, queer).
Permissions & Fee and Test Year
- Year of Development: 2023
- Original Publication: Archives of Sexual Behavior, 52(8), 3343–3363.
- Copyright & Permissions: The instrument is copyrighted by the author and Springer Nature. It is accessible for non-commercial academic research and clinical diagnostic purposes upon appropriate citation of the original source.
- Commercial Usage: Any commercial implementation, commercial platform integration, or for-profit utilization requires explicit written authorization from the primary copyright holder.
- Fee: Free of charge for academic, educational, and clinical non-profit research.
- Contact for Inquiries: Dr. Liza Berdychevsky, Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism, College of Applied Health Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Email: [email protected]).
References
- Bancroft, J., & Janssen, E. (2000). The dual control model of male sexual response: A theoretical approach to centrally mediated erectile dysfunction. European Urology, 38(Suppl. 2), 68–75. https://doi.org/10.1159/000052382
- Berdychevsky, L. (2023). (Un)forgotten sex lives during the COVID-19 pandemic: Coping strategies that work and the role of experience. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 52(8), 3343–3363. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-023-02630-6
- Bodenmann, G. (1995). A systemic-transactional conceptualization of stress and coping in couples. Swiss Journal of Psychology, 54(1), 34–49.
- Bodenmann, G. (2005). Dyadic coping and its significance for marital functioning. In T. A. Revenson, K. Kayser, & G. Bodenmann (Eds.), Couples coping with stress: Emerging perspectives on dyadic coping (pp. 33–49). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/11031-002
- Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, appraisal, and coping. Springer Publishing Company.
- Meston, C. M., Hamilton, L. D., & Harte, C. B. (2020). The comprehensive sexual motivations scale (CSMS): Development and validation. The Journal of Sex Research, 57(3), 363–376. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2019.1665618
- Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68