Abstract
The Sexual Rights Instrument (SRI) is a comprehensive, 94-item psychometric measurement tool developed by Iva Lottes and Rex Adkins (2003) to evaluate public and individual attitudes toward, and endorsement of, fundamental human rights in the domain of human sexuality. Grounded conceptually in the landmark 1999 Declaration of Sexual Rights adopted by the World Association for Sexual Health (WAS; formerly the World Association of Sexology), the instrument quantifies support across the 11 universally recognized sexual rights: sexual freedom; sexual autonomy, integrity, and safety; sexual privacy; sexual equity; sexual pleasure; emotional sexual expression; free sexual association; responsible reproductive choices; access to scientific sexual information; comprehensive sexuality education; and sexual health care. Because sexual equity presents distinct historical, legal, and cultural barriers across diverse marginalized populations, the SRI operationalizes this right through five dedicated target subscales: economically disadvantaged individuals, gay and lesbian individuals, individuals with physical disabilities, adolescents, and older adults (yielding 15 distinct subscales in total). Administered with a 5-point Likert response format ranging from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree, the instrument intentionally incorporates overlapping items across scales to mirror the theoretical and legal reality of human rights: namely, their inherent indivisibility, interdependence, and interconnectivity. Across initial validation cohorts of university students in the northeastern United States ($N_1 = 388$, $N_2 = 175$), internal consistency reliability coefficients (Cronbach’s alpha) ranged from .64 to .93 in Sample 1 and from .57 to .92 in Sample 2. Construct validity is firmly established through robust, statistically significant correlations with validated measures of political conservatism, religiosity, feminist ideology, and the personal value assigned to sexuality, as well as significant mean differences based on sexual orientation history. The SRI represents an indispensable psychometric foundation for empirical sexology, public health policy assessment, bioethics, and human rights advocacy.
Keywords
Sexual Rights Instrument, human rights, World Association for Sexual Health, sexual equity, comprehensive sexuality education, sexual autonomy, reproductive freedom, sexology psychometrics, sexual health attitudes, LGBTQ rights
Authors
The Sexual Rights Instrument was designed, psychometrically validated, and published by Iva Lottes, Ph.D., and Rex Adkins, M.A. The instrument was developed within the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), located in Baltimore, Maryland, United States.
Dr. Iva Lottes has served as an eminent professor of sociology and international sexuality researcher whose scholarship has centered on cross-national comparisons of sexual health, gender roles, attitudes toward sexual assault, and sexuality education policies across the United States and Europe (notably Sweden and Finland). Rex Adkins contributed extensively to the instrument’s methodological operationalization, questionnaire design, and statistical validation during his tenure at the institution.
Purpose
The primary purpose of the Sexual Rights Instrument is to provide an empirically rigorous, standardized psychometric mechanism to assess adherence to, endorsement of, and opposition toward the fundamental sexual rights articulated by international consensus. While the broader concept of human rights had been codified in international law through instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW, 1979), the specific articulation of sexual rights as inalienable, universal human rights remained contentious, fragmented, and under-researched throughout the late 20th century. The formal ratification of the Declaration of Sexual Rights at the 14th World Congress of Sexology in Hong Kong (WAS, 1999) established a definitive normative framework; however, social scientists and public health officials lacked a multidimensional scale to quantify how these principles are received, supported, or rejected across different societal strata.
In clinical and public health domains, the SRI serves multiple vital functions:
- Health Policy and Legal Reform Evaluation: The scale enables policy analysts and legislative researchers to gauge public readiness for statutory protections, such as non-discrimination ordinances protecting sexual minorities, reproductive autonomy safeguards, universal contraception mandates, and institutional privacy rights in eldercare and disability facilities.
- Sexuality Education Assessment: Educational researchers use the SRI to evaluate the efficacy of school-based, collegiate, and community-level sexuality curricula. By administering the instrument longitudinally (pre- and post-intervention), educators can measure whether didactic training in sexual health fosters broader endorsement of bodily autonomy, consent culture, and tolerance toward marginalized groups.
- Healthcare Professional Training: The instrument can be integrated into medical, nursing, and counseling curricula to identify latent biases among future practitioners regarding the sexual expression of older adults, individuals with disabilities, and low-income populations seeking reproductive care.
- Cross-Cultural and Sociological Research: The SRI allows sociologists to investigate the structural determinants of sexual attitudes, exploring how systemic variables such as patriarchal cultural norms, religious fundamentalism, political polarization, and socio-economic deprivation impede or accelerate the adoption of egalitarian sexual values.
Psychological Construct
The psychological construct assessed by the SRI is the multidimensional latent domain of endorsement of universal sexual rights. Rather than evaluating personal sexual behavior, guilt, or erotophobia in isolation, the SRI measures an individual’s sociopolitical and ethical orientation toward institutional, interpersonal, and bodily self-determination in the sexual realm. The construct is conceptualized across 15 distinct dimensions encompassing the 11 WAS rights and 5 specific sub-populations vulnerable to equity deprivation:
1. The Right to Sexual Freedom
This dimension assesses the belief that individuals possess the inherent right to express their full sexual potential and engage in non-coercive, consensual sexual acts without intrusive statutory prohibitions or legal penalties (e.g., opposition to sodomy laws or archaic moral policing).
2. The Right to Sexual Autonomy, Integrity, and Safety of the Sexual Body
This subscale captures convictions regarding bodily integrity, personal sovereignty over one’s physical self, and the absolute prohibition of sexual violence, coercion, abuse, and harassment. It emphasizes the right to withdraw sexual consent at any stage of an intimate interaction and demands institutional safeguards against assault.
3. The Right to Sexual Privacy
This construct reflects attitudes regarding the inviolability of consensual intimate decisions and private behaviors from state surveillance, employer scrutiny, media intrusion, or public exposure, asserting that an individual’s sexual history and practices remain entirely personal as long as the rights of others are not infringed.
4–8. The Right to Sexual Equity (Targeted Sub-Populations)
Because systemic oppression operates along distinct structural axes, the construct of sexual equity is operationalized across five vulnerable groups who systematically experience marginalization, infantilization, or institutional control:
- Economically Disadvantaged / Poor People: Measures support for state-subsidized reproductive health care, universal access to STI testing and treatment, and affordable family planning, rejecting the premise that bodily self-determination is a market commodity accessible only to the affluent.
- Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Persons: Evaluates attitudes toward non-discrimination in civil life, marriage and union recognition, military service, adoption parity, equal social dignity, and protection from homophobic hate crimes.
- Persons with Physical Disabilities: Assesses recognition of the sexual agency, romantic desires, and physical pleasures of disabled individuals, asserting institutional duties to provide privacy, sexual education, and specialized accommodations rather than desexualizing or segregating them.
- Adolescents: Evaluates support for granting youth developmentally appropriate agency, confidential access to contraception and STI treatment, comprehensive knowledge, and communicative tools to navigate peer pressure and refuse non-consensual activity.
- Older Adults / Senior Citizens: Examines beliefs regarding the validity, normalcy, and psychological necessity of sexuality in aging individuals, challenging ageist taboos in community and long-term care environments.
9. The Right to Sexual Pleasure
This dimension assesses the endorsement of sexual pleasure—including autoeroticism (masturbation) across the lifespan, martial intimacy, and non-procreative gratification—as a legitimate, healthy source of physical, psychological, and spiritual well-being for both women and men.
10. The Right to Emotional Sexual Expression
This subscale operationalizes the belief that human sexuality encompasses profound communicative, affective, and relational needs. It affirms that sexual expression transcends physical mechanics and constitutes a vital vehicle for intimacy, touch, tenderness, fantasy, and love.
11. The Right to Sexually Associate Freely
This construct measures the belief that individuals must be free to choose their intimate relationships without state coercion or prohibitive societal penalties—encompassing the right to marry, establish non-marital cohabiting partnerships, remain single, or obtain an accessible and equitable divorce.
12. The Right to Make Free and Responsible Reproductive Choices
This dimension encompasses attitudes toward total reproductive autonomy: the fundamental human right to decide whether, when, and with whom to bear children, supported by unrestricted access to safe and legal abortion, fertility regulation technologies, and assisted reproduction.
13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)
14. The Right to Comprehensive Sexuality Education
This construct measures endorsement of lifelong, age-appropriate, institutionally supported sexuality education starting in childhood and continuing through adulthood, addressing biological, social, cultural, and relational realities rather than fear-based or abstinence-only curricula.
15. The Right to Sexual Health Care
This dimension assesses support for universally accessible, non-discriminatory health systems equipped to prevent, diagnose, and treat all sexual problems, concerns, dysfunctions, and sexually transmitted infections across the entire socio-economic spectrum.
Theoretical Framework
The construction of the Sexual Rights Instrument is anchored in contemporary sociological human rights theory, public health ethics, and feminist jurisprudence. Historically, Western legal and psychological traditions pathologized diverse sexual expressions and subjected bodily autonomy to rigorous ecclesiastical, state, and psychiatric control. The theoretical evolution underpinning the SRI draws heavily upon four major frameworks:
1. The Universalist Human Rights Paradigm and WAS Declarations
Following the 1994 United Nations International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo and the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, international discourse began formally linking reproductive health directly to basic human rights. In 1997, at the 13th World Congress of Sexology in Valencia, Spain, WAS issued its initial declaration, which was subsequently updated, broadened, and officially ratified in 1999 in Hong Kong as the WAS Declaration of Sexual Rights. The foundational axiom of this framework is that sexuality is an integral dimension of human personhood that cannot be divorced from universal principles of liberty, equality, dignity, and justice. Lottes and Adkins (2003) operationalized this legal-ethical taxonomy into psychometric indicators.
2. The Indivisibility and Interdependence Principle of Human Rights
A core postulate of international human rights law—formally codified in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action (1993)—is that all human rights are universal, indivisible, interdependent, and interrelated. In the psychometric architecture of the SRI, this principle generates a deliberate structural feature: item overlap across scales. In psychometric scale development, classical test theory frequently prioritizes mutually exclusive factor structures where each indicator loads uniquely onto a single latent trait. However, Lottes and Adkins argued that enforcing mutual exclusivity upon sexual rights creates an artificial, ecologically invalid distortion. For instance, an adolescent’s right to obtain contraception without parental notification is simultaneously an issue of Sexual Equity for Adolescents, The Right to Sexual Privacy, and The Right to Make Free and Responsible Reproductive Choices. Similarly, teaching high schoolers refusal skills concerns Comprehensive Sexuality Education, Sexual Autonomy/Safety, and Adolescent Equity. The overlapping design of the SRI mathematically mirrors the doctrinal indivisibility of rights.
3. Feminist Jurisprudence and Bodily Autonomy
The theoretical architecture incorporates principles of feminist legal theory (e.g., Catharine MacKinnon, Kimberlu00e9 Crenshaw), which assert that the patriarchal state has historically maintained dominion over women’s bodies through the regulation of reproduction, criminalization of bodily autonomy, and normalization of sexual coercion. The SRI’s dimensions on reproductive choices, sexual pleasure for women, and bodily integrity directly measure an individual’s rejection of gendered subjugation and patriarchal bodily surveillance.
4. The Social Model of Disability and Intersectionality
By disaggregating sexual equity into marginalized cohorts, the SRI draws upon intersectional theory and the social model of disability. The model posits that the primary barriers to sexual expression experienced by disabled people or nursing home residents are not their physiological limitations, but rather social architectures, paternalistic attitudes, systemic desexualization, and institutional policies that deny privacy and autonomy.
Validity
The construct, convergent, discriminant, and known-groups validity of the Sexual Rights Instrument was rigorously established by Lottes and Adkins (2003) across two independent academic cohorts in the northeastern United States:
Convergent and Construct Validity
The construct validity of the 15 scales was demonstrated by examining systematic, theoretically predicted correlations with four well-established sociopolitical and psychological constructs:
- Political Conservatism: Construct validity theory dictates that political conservatism, characterized by preferences for traditional social arrangements and institutional moral authority, should negatively correlate with the expansion of individual sexual self-determination. As hypothesized, scores across almost all 15 SRI scales exhibited moderate to strong, statistically significant negative correlations with conservative political views ($p < .001$).
- Religiosity: Higher levels of religious commitment, institutional orthodoxy, and frequent devotional practice were significantly and negatively correlated with support for sexual rights ($p < .001$), particularly regarding abortion, adolescent access to contraception, gay and lesbian equity, and non-marital cohabitation.
- Support for Feminist Causes: Strong, positive, and statistically significant correlations emerged between pro-feminist attitudes and high scores on the SRI scales ($p < .001$). Individuals endorsing gender equality showed the highest levels of support for reproductive rights, bodily safety, comprehensive sex education, and universal access to sexual health services.
- Personal Value of Sex: Respondents who placed high subjective value and importance on sexuality within their personal lives demonstrated significantly higher endorsement of sexual rights ($p < .01$), particularly across the scales assessing sexual pleasure, emotional sexual expression, and free sexual association.
Known-Groups and Discriminant Validity
The instrument demonstrated exceptional known-groups criterion validity through comparisons based on sexual orientation behavioral histories. Independent samples $t$-tests revealed highly significant mean differences between respondents who reported exclusively heterosexual partnerships and those who reported having had at least one same-sex sexual partner. Non-heterosexual and behaviorally bisexual respondents scored significantly higher across the 15 scales, displaying virtually unanimous endorsement of the Gays and Lesbians Sexual Equity scale, the Sexual Association scale, and the Sexual Privacy scale ($p < .001$).
Content and Face Validity
Content validity was established through expert consensus panels. The initial pool of items was scrutinized by prominent academic sexuality researchers with specialized expertise in human rights. Based on expert critical review, items were refined for semantic clarity, ecological relevance, and conceptual alignment with WAS definitions, resulting in two items undergoing substantial revision prior to field testing. Furthermore, 19 items were incorporated or adapted from established, validated sexological scales, anchoring the SRI in proven empirical measurement traditions.
Reliability
The internal consistency reliability of the 15 subscales comprising the Sexual Rights Instrument was estimated by calculating Cronbach’s alpha ($lpha$) coefficients across two distinct validation samples:
- Sample 1: Comprised $N = 388$ university students (41% male, 59% female; mean age = 26.5 years) recruited from human sexuality lecture courses and broad campus recruitment.
- Sample 2: Comprised $N = 175$ university students (38% male, 62% female; mean age = 28.6 years) recruited via social science research methods courses.
The empirical reliability coefficients obtained for each scale across both cohorts are detailed below:
- Sexual Freedom (4 items): Sample 1 $lpha = .72$; Sample 2 $lpha = .65$.
- Sexual Autonomy and Safety (13 items): Sample 1 $lpha = .84$; Sample 2 $lpha = .79$.
- Sexual Privacy (9 items): Sample 1 $lpha = .71$; Sample 2 $lpha = .57$.
- Sexual Equity: Poor People (5 items): Sample 1 $lpha = .77$; Sample 2 $lpha = .81$.
- Sexual Equity: Gays and Lesbians (13 items): Sample 1 $lpha = .93$; Sample 2 $lpha = .92$.
- Sexual Equity: Handicapped People (5 items): Sample 1 $lpha = .75$; Sample 2 $lpha = .75$.
- Sexual Equity: Adolescents (15 items): Sample 1 $lpha = .87$; Sample 2 $lpha = .83$.
- Sexual Equity: Elderly People (6 items): Sample 1 $lpha = .74$; Sample 2 $lpha = .72$.
- Sexual Pleasure (9 items): Sample 1 $lpha = .83$; Sample 2 $lpha = .82$.
- Emotional Sexual Expression (7 items): Sample 1 $lpha = .64$; Sample 2 $lpha = .67$.
- Sexually Associate Freely (11 items): Sample 1 $lpha = .83$; Sample 2 $lpha = .72$.
- Responsible Reproductive Choices (18 items): Sample 1 $lpha = .90$; Sample 2 $lpha = .85$.
- Information Based on Scientific Inquiry (10 items): Sample 1 $lpha = .82$; Sample 2 $lpha = .79$.
- Comprehensive Sexuality Education (27 items): Sample 1 $lpha = .91$; Sample 2 $lpha = .90$.
- Sexual Health Care (11 items): Sample 1 $lpha = .86$; Sample 2 $lpha = .86$.
With very few exceptions (such as Sexual Privacy in Sample 2 [$lpha = .57$] and Emotional Sexual Expression [$lpha = .64–.67$]), the overwhelming majority of scales demonstrate robust internal consistency, with coefficients routinely exceeding the conventional psychometric threshold of $.70$, and several scales (e.g., Gays and Lesbians, Reproductive Choices, Comprehensive Sex Education) exceeding $.90$, reflecting outstanding measurement precision.
Factor Analysis
The structural composition of the Sexual Rights Instrument presents a unique, sophisticated case study in psychometric modeling. Classical exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) traditionally operate under the assumption that individual manifest indicators (items) should load predominantly on one orthogonal or oblique latent factor, minimizing cross-loadings. However, the theoretical reality of international human rights explicitly contradicts this atomistic assumption.
Structural Overlap and Latent Interdependence
In developing the SRI, Lottes and Adkins deliberately structured the 94 items into multi-trait scales where items systematically function within multiple conceptual dimensions. For example:
- Item 10 (“High school students should be taught negotiating skills enabling them to avoid unwanted sexual activities“) serves simultaneously as an indicator of Sexual Autonomy and Safety, Sexual Equity for Adolescents, and Comprehensive Sexuality Education.
- Item 26 (“Low-income women should be given financial assistance for the purchase of contraception“) loads concurrently onto Sexual Equity: Poor People, Responsible Reproductive Choices, and Sexual Health Care.
Consequently, fitting an unconstrained standard 15-factor independent cluster CFA model yields substantial multicollinearity and non-positive definite covariance matrices if cross-loadings are constrained to zero. In empirical applications, the subscales function best as semi-autonomous composite scales. When psychometricians evaluate individual subscales separately via EFA, unidimensionality is consistently supported for the specific target right, with dominant first eigenvalues accounting for the vast majority of shared item variance.
Bifactor and Hierarchical Modeling Considerations
Subsequent psychometric evaluations of instruments structured similarly to the SRI have proposed bifactor structural equation models. Under a bifactor formulation, a single overarching general factor—Global Support for Human Sexual Rights—accounts for the common variance across all 94 items, while 15 specific group factors capture the unique, localized variance attributable to specific legal, demographic, or institutional domains. Such modeling affirms that while respondents possess a generalized ideological orientation toward sexual freedom and equity, meaningful domain-specific variance persists across distinct human rights areas.
Instrument / Measurement Tool
The operational characteristics and structural specifications of the Sexual Rights Instrument are outlined below:
- Test Type: Multi-dimensional self-report attitudinal questionnaire / psychometric survey instrument.
- Target Population: Adults (aged 18 and older); suitable for collegiate populations, professional trainees (medical, social work, nursing), and broad community samples.
- Total Item Count: 94 Likert-type items distributed across non-consecutive sequences to minimize response bias.
- Subscale Architecture: 15 distinct subscales (11 WAS Sexual Rights + 5 Targeted Equity Groups):
- Administration Format: Standard paper-and-pencil questionnaire, optical mark recognition (OMR) machine-scannable bubble sheets, or computerized/web-based assessment forms.
- Completion Time: Approximately 35 to 45 minutes (average: 40 minutes) for the full 94-item battery. Researchers may also elect to administer isolated subscales independently depending on research objectives.
- Response Scale: 5-point Likert response scale scored as follows:
- Strongly Agree (SA)
- Agree (A)
- Neither Agree nor Disagree (N)
- Disagree (D)
- Strongly Disagree (SD)
- Scoring and Recoding Protocol:
- Direct-scored items are coded: Strongly Agree = 5, Agree = 4, Neither Agree nor Disagree = 3, Disagree = 2, Strongly Disagree = 1.
- Reverse-scored items (identified with an asterisk * in scoring matrices) must be reverse-coded prior to subscale score computation: Strongly Agree = 1, Agree = 2, Neither Agree nor Disagree = 3, Disagree = 4, Strongly Disagree = 5.
- Subscale scores are obtained by calculating the arithmetic sum (or mean) of the designated items within each scale. Higher scores systematically denote greater endorsement of, and advocacy for, universal sexual rights.
- Subscale Item Composition:
- Sexual Freedom (4 items): 1*, 16*, 42, 60*
- Sexual Autonomy and Safety (13 items): 10*, 15, 21, 24*, 28*, 29*, 34*, 35*, 36*, 43*, 61*, 72*, 84*
- Sexual Privacy (9 items): 1*, 2, 11, 16*, 22, 53, 60*, 62, 78
- Sexual Equity: Poor People (5 items): 26*, 27*, 41*, 73*, 94
- Sexual Equity: Gays and Lesbians (13 items): 3, 5*, 8*, 11, 15, 23*, 47*, 61*, 63, 68, 75, 83, 92
- Sexual Equity: Handicapped People (5 items): 9, 67, 70*, 81*, 93*
- Sexual Equity: Adolescents (15 items): 10*, 19*, 22, 28*, 35*, 36*, 40*, 51*, 52*, 57*, 62, 72*, 76*, 84*, 89*
- Sexual Equity: Elderly People (6 items): 37, 45*, 54, 74*, 78, 86*
- Sexual Pleasure (9 items): 4*, 14*, 56, 64, 65*, 69, 79*, 87, 88*
- Emotional Sexual Expression (7 items): 13*, 23*, 45, 46, 50*, 55*, 91*
- Sexually Associate Freely (11 items): 1*, 5*, 8*, 12, 16*, 25*, 30*, 31, 39, 47, 60
- Responsible Reproductive Choices (18 items): 6, 17*, 19*, 26*, 32*, 40*, 51*, 52*, 62, 71, 76*, 80, 82*, 85*, 86*, 90*, 92, 94
- Information Based on Scientific Inquiry (10 items): 6, 17*, 19*, 33*, 38, 44*, 57*, 58*, 66, 77*
- Comprehensive Sexuality Education (27 items): 6, 7*, 8*, 10*, 17*, 18, 19*, 24*, 28*, 33*, 35*, 36, 38, 40*, 44*, 48, 52*, 57*, 58*, 66, 70*, 72*, 74*, 76*, 81*, 83, 89*
- Sexual Health Care (11 items): 20*, 26*, 27*, 43*, 47*, 49, 58*, 59, 72*, 77*, 94
Permissions & Fee and Test Year
The Sexual Rights Instrument was formally published in 2003 in The Journal of Sex Research (Vol. 40, No. 3). The instrument was developed with institutional and academic support to facilitate scientific inquiry and public education regarding human sexuality.
Under fair use principles for academic research, the instrument is widely accessible to behavioral scientists, educators, and graduate students conducting non-commercial scholarly research, provided appropriate formal attribution is rendered to Dr. Iva Lottes, Rex Adkins, and the original publication. Researchers planning commercial deployments, funded organizational evaluations, or large-scale clinical test battery integrations should contact the original authors or consult the copyright policies of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS) and Taylor & Francis.
References
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Fisher, T. D., & Hall, R. G. (1998). Attitudes Toward Sexuality Scale. In C. M. Davis, W. L. Yarber, R. Bauserman, G. Schreer, & S. L. Davis (Eds.), Handbook of sexuality-related measures (pp. 32–33). Sage Publications.
Godin, S., Frank, S., & Jacobson, S. (1998). Family Life Sex Education Goal Questionnaire. In C. M. Davis, W. L. Yarber, R. Bauserman, G. Schreer, & S. L. Davis (Eds.), Handbook of sexuality-related measures (pp. 203–205). Sage Publications.
Hudson, W. W., Murphy, G. J., & Nurius, P. S. (1983). A short-form scale to measure liberal vs. conservative orientations toward human sexual expression. The Journal of Sex Research, 19(3), 258–272. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224498309551186
Klein, D. (1998). The Sexuality Education Program Feature/Program Outcome Inventory. In C. M. Davis, W. L. Yarber, R. Bauserman, G. Schreer, & S. L. Davis (Eds.), Handbook of sexuality-related measures (pp. 206–208). Sage Publications.
Lottes, I., & Adkins, R. (2003). The construction and psychometric properties of an instrument to assess support for sexual rights. The Journal of Sex Research, 40(3), 286–295. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224490309552194
Van de Ven, P., Bornholt, L., & Bailey, M. (1998). Homophobic Behavior of Students Scale. In C. M. Davis, W. L. Yarber, R. Bauserman, G. Schreer, & S. L. Davis (Eds.), Handbook of sexuality-related measures (pp. 369–370). Sage Publications.
White, C. B. (1998). Aging Sexual Knowledge and Attitudes Scale. In C. M. Davis, W. L. Yarber, R. Bauserman, G. Schreer, & S. L. Davis (Eds.), Handbook of sexuality-related measures (pp. 66–69). Sage Publications.
World Association for Sexual Health. (1999). Declaration of sexual rights. Adopted at the 14th World Congress of Sexology, Hong Kong. WAS.
Items of the Scale
Directions: Circle the response that best corresponds to your view about each statement using the following choices:
- SA = Strongly Agree
- A = Agree
- N = Neither Agree nor Disagree
- D = Disagree
- SD = Strongly Disagree
- There should be no laws prohibiting sexual acts between consenting adults.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Candidates for public office should be willing to disclose their sexual histories to the public.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - The federal government has done enough already to eliminate discrimination against gay men.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - A pleasurable sex life is very important to the vast majority of men’s overall sense of well-being.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Homosexual couples should have the same legal rights as married couples.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Women do NOT need to be educated about the most up to date means of fertility regulation/contraception.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - It is a responsibility of the media, including TV and the Internet, to inform people about scientific research relating to contraception/birth control.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Sex education courses in public high schools should discuss issues related to sexual orientation.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - It is unreasonable to try to provide ways for physically handicapped people to enjoy their sexuality.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - High school students should be taught negotiating skills enabling them to avoid unwanted sexual activities.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - It is still important to investigate the sexual orientation (that is, finding out if they are gay, lesbian, or bisexual) of those people working in any branch of the armed forces.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Laws should make it financially difficult for married couples with children to get divorced.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - It is perfectly normal to have sexual fantasies.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - A pleasurable sex life is very important to the vast majority of women’s overall sense of well- being.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - National policy has successfully protected lesbians from discrimination.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - What two consenting adults do together sexually is their business.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Men should be educated about the most up-to-date means of fertility regulation/contraception.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - It is NOT the obligation of the media to inform the public about the harmful effects and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Teenagers should be given up-to-date information on how to avoid becoming a parent before they are ready.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Health insurance companies should routinely cover the majority of costs to treat the most common and curable sexually transmitted diseases.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - It is acceptable to put pressure on someone to participate in a sexual activity that was initially refused.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Health care professionals should have to get parental consent before treating an adolescent (<18) for a sexually transmitted disease.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - It should be acceptable for gay men to hold hands in public.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - The media, including TV and the Internet, should take a major role in educating people about the harmful effects of sexual abuse on its victims.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - It should be socially acceptable for two people to live together without being married.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Low-income women should be given financial assistance for the purchase of contraception.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - There should be a place where uninsured people with low incomes can get immediate treatment for curable sexually transmitted diseases.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Young children (<12) need to be taught ways to help them minimize their risk of being sexually abused.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - It is wrong to psychologically pressure someone to engage in sexual activity.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Laws giving cohabiting couples the same legal opportunities as married couples, with respect to health insurance, need to be enacted.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - If a non-married couple conceives a child, they should get married.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Safe and legal abortions should be available to all women, before the 4th month of pregnancy.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Sex education courses in high school should help adolescents understand how different ethnic and cultural groups vary in sexual beliefs and behaviors.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Affordable health services should be available to help victims recovering from sexual abuse.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Public high schools should provide programs to try to eliminate forms of non-consensual sexual activity.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - The media should provide examples demonstrating to young people how to say ‘No’ to unwanted sexual activity.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Sexual activity for senior citizens should be discouraged.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Sex education should be restricted to the home.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - It is much too easy to get a divorce in the United States.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Teenage girls should be educated in high school about how sexually transmitted diseases influence their ability to get pregnant.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Policies in the United States should enable health providers to offer all people affordable diagnosis and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - I approve of state laws which make anal sex illegal.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - A person should be able to stop a sexual interaction at any point, no matter how far that sexual interaction has gone.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Sexuality instructors should have training in the health, social, cultural, and biological aspects of sexuality.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Sexual activity is often psychologically beneficial for older (>65) people.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - For most people, emotional expression is of little value to their long-term sexual relationships.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - The union of homosexual couples deserves some form of public recognition.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Sex education should only be given to people ready for marriage.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - The government already contributes enough for the health care of its citizens.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Sexual activity is typically a lifelong need.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - It should be easy for teenagers to get contraceptives.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Teenage girls should be educated in high school about the harmful effects of a mother’s sexually transmitted disease or her drug use on her baby.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - The media should be able to report on the sexuality of any person.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Nursing homes should restrict the sexual activities of their residents.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Sexual intimacy provides a way for many people to express their love for their partner.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Self-masturbation as an adult is juvenile and immature.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Teenagers should be taught ways to reduce their risk for getting a sexually transmitted disease.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Physicians should be educated on how illnesses and their treatments affect a patient’s sexual response.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - The government should NOT help small businesses provide health insurance for their employees.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - It is wrong to investigate the sexual activities of two consenting adults.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - I would sign my name to a petition asking the government to protect gay men from physical violence.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Parents should be informed if their children (<18) have been to a health professional to obtain a contraceptive device.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Heterosexual men have more positive characteristics than gay men.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Women who emphasize sexual pleasure in their lives overlook life’s more important pursuits.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Self-masturbation in childhood can help a person develop a natural and healthy attitude toward sex.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - It is the duty of parents and NOT the schools to provide sex education for their children.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Physically handicapped people should NOT have sex.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Too much social approval has been given to gay men.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Self-masturbation by a person who is married is NOT healthy.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Sexuality courses should be provided for those who are disabled.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Abortion is wrong, no matter what the circumstances are.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Sex education courses in high school should help adolescents express their desire NOT to be involved sexually if they do NOT wish to be.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - The government should provide more financial assistance to hospitals and doctors to help cover the cost of the health care of poor people.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Care takers of the aged should be educated about the sexual needs of their patients.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Homosexual men are treated justly in our society.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Sex education courses in high school should help adolescents use protection (condom/birth control) if they plan to have intercourse.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Physicians should communicate to patients how illnesses and their treatments affect sexual response.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Nursing homes have no obligation to provide privacy for residents who wish to express their sexuality, either alone or with their partner.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Self-masturbation in private should be considered a normal and healthy activity for adolescents.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - The Supreme Court should make abortion illegal in the United States.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Care takers of the disabled should be educated about the sexual needs of their patients.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - I believe contraceptive use is a responsibility for both men and women.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Heterosexual women have more positive characteristics than lesbians.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Sex education courses in high school should help adolescents deal with the negative aspects of peer pressure.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Artificial insemination should be available to lesbians.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Nursing homes should provide condoms for their residents.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Men who emphasize sexual pleasure in their lives overlook life’s more important pursuits.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Adults who self-masturbate in private should be considered normal and healthy.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Adolescents in high school should be taught skills to reduce guilt and fear about sexual issues.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - The final decision to have an abortion should be up to the pregnant woman.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Sexual relationships provide an important and fulfilling part of life for most people.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Gay men should NOT be able to adopt children.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - Institutions for the physically disabled should provide privacy to allow residents to engage in sexual activities.
(SA / A / N / D / SD) - The government does NOT need to provide family planning services to low-income women.
(SA / A / N / D / SD)