The short version of the Sexual Distress Scale (SDS-3): Measurement invariance across countries, gender identities, and sexual orientations

Lin CY 1 , Tsai MC 2 , Koós M 3 , Nagy L 3 , Kraus SW 4 , Demetrovics Z 5 Show all authors , Potenza MN 6 , Ballester-Arnal R 7 , Batthyány D 8 , Bergeron S 9 , Billieux J 10 , Briken P 11 , Cárdenas-López G 12 , Carvalho J 13 , Castro-Calvo J 14 , Chen L 15 , Ciocca G 16 , Corazza O 17 , Csako RI 18 , Fernandez DP 19 , Fernandez EF 20 , Fujiwara H 21 , Fuss J 22 , Gabrhelík R 23 , Gewirtz-Meydan A 24 , Gjoneska B 25 , Gola M 26 , Grubbs JB 27 , Hashim HT 28 , Islam MS 29 , Ismail M 28 , Jiménez-Martínez M 30 , Jurin T 31 , Kalina O 32 , Klein V 33 , Költő A 34 , Lee SK 35 , Lewczuk K 36 , Lochner C 37 , López-Alvarado S 38 , Lukavská K 23 , Mayta-Tristán P 39 , Milea I 40 , Miller DJ 41 , Orosová O 42 , Orosz G 43 , Sungkyunkwan University's research team , Ponce FP 44 , Quintana GR 45 , Garzola GCQ 46 , Ramos-Diaz J 47 , Rigaud K 43 , Rousseau A 48 , Scanavino MT 49 , Schulmeyer MK 50 , Sharan P 51 , Shibata M 21 , Shoib S 52 , Sigre-Leirós V 10 , Sniewski L 53 , Spasovski O 54 , Steibliene V 55 , Stein DJ 56 , Strizek J 57 , Štulhofer A 58 , Ünsal BC 3 , Vaillancourt-Morel MP 59 , Van Hout MC 60 , Bőthe B 9

Affiliations 

  • 1 Institute of Allied Health Sciences, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan
  • 2 Department of Pediatrics, National Cheng Kung University Hospital, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan
  • 3 Doctoral School of Psychology, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary
  • 4 Department of Psychology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV, USA
  • 5 Institute of Psychology, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary
  • 6 Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA
  • 7 Departamento de Psicología Básica, Clínica y Psicobiología, University Jaume I, Castelló, Spain
  • 8 Institute for Behavioural Addictions, Sigmund Freud University, Vienna, Austria
  • 9 Département de Psychologie, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada
  • 10 Institute of Psychology, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
  • 11 Institute for Sex Research, Sexual Medicine & Forensic Psychiatry, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE), Hamburg, Germany
  • 12 Virtual Teaching and Cyberpsychology Laboratory, School of Psychology, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico, Mexico
  • 13 William James Center for Research, Department of Education and Psychology, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal
  • 14 Department of Personality, Assessment, and Psychological Treatments, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain
  • 15 Department of Psychology, College of Humanity and Social Science, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, Fujian province, China
  • 16 Section of Sexual Psychopathology, Department of Dynamic and Clinical Psychology, and Health Studies, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
  • 17 Department of Clinical, Pharmaceutical and Biological Sciences, University of Hertfordshire, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom
  • 18 Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand
  • 19 Department of Psychology, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, United Kingdom
  • 20 HELP University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 21 Department of Neuropsychiatry, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
  • 22 Institute of Forensic Psychiatry and Sex Research, Center for Translational Neuro- and Behavioral Sciences, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany
  • 23 Department of Addictology, First Faculty of Medicine, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
  • 24 School of Social Work, Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Sciences, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
  • 25 Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Skopje, Republic of North Macedonia
  • 26 Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
  • 27 Center on Alcohol, Substance use, and Addictions, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States
  • 28 University of Baghdad, College of Medicine, Baghdad, Iraq
  • 29 Department of Public Health and Informatics, Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh
  • 30 Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia, Colombia
  • 31 Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
  • 32 Department of Educational Psychology and Psychology of Health, Pavol Jozef Safarik University in Kosice, Kosice, Slovakia
  • 33 School of Psychology, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom
  • 34 Health Promotion Research Centre, University of Galway, Galway, Ireland
  • 35 Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine, Hallym University, Chuncheon, Republic of Korea
  • 36 Institute of Psychology, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University, Warsaw, Poland
  • 37 SAMRC Unit on Risk & Resilience in Mental Disorders, Department of Psychiatry, Stellenbosch University, Cape Town, South Africa
  • 38 University of Cuenca, Azuay, Ecuador
  • 39 Facultad de Medicina, Universidad Científica del Sur, Lima, Perú
  • 40 International Institute for the Advanced Studies of Psychotherapy and Applied Mental Health, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
  • 41 College of Healthcare Sciences, James Cook University, Queensland, Australia
  • 42 Department of Educational Psychology and Psychology of Health, Pavol Jozef Safarik Universit y in Kosice, Kosice, Slovakia
  • 43 Artois University, Arras, France
  • 44 Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de Talca, Talca, Talca, Region del Maule, Chile
  • 45 Departamento de Psicología y Filosofía, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de Tarapacá, Arica, Arica y Parinacota, Chile
  • 46 Florida State University, Panama, Republic of Panama
  • 47 Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad Privada del Norte, Lima, Perú
  • 48 Leuven School For Mass Communication, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
  • 49 Department of Psychiatry, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
  • 50 Universidad Privada de Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Santa Cruz, Bolivia
  • 51 Department of Psychiatry, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India
  • 52 Department of Psychology, Sharda University, Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India
  • 53 Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand
  • 54 Faculty of Philosophy, University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava, Trnava, Slovakia
  • 55 Laboratory of Behavioral Medicine, Neuroscience Institute, Lithuanian University of Health sciences, Kaunas, Lithuania
  • 56 SAMRC Unit on Risk & Resilience in Mental Disorders, Department of Psychiatry and Neuroscience Institute, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
  • 57 Austrian Public Health Institute, Vienna, Austria
  • 58 Department of Sociology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
  • 59 Département de Psychologie, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Trois-Rivières, Canada
  • 60 Public Health Institute, Faculty of Health, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, Merseyside, United Kingdom
Int J Clin Health Psychol, 2024;24(2):100461.
PMID: 38706570 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijchp.2024.100461

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The three-item Sexual Distress Scale (SDS-3) has been frequently used to assess distress related to sexuality in public health surveys and research on sexual wellbeing. However, its psychometric properties and measurement invariance across cultural, gender and sexual subgroups have not yet been examined. This multinational study aimed to validate the SDS-3 and test its psychometric properties, including measurement invariance across language, country, gender identity, and sexual orientation groups.

METHODS: We used global survey data from 82,243 individuals (Mean age=32.39 years; 40.3 % men, 57.0 % women, 2.8 % non-binary, and 0.6 % other genders) participating in the International Sexual Survey (ISS; https://internationalsexsurvey.org/) across 42 countries and 26 languages. Participants completed the SDS-3, as well as questions regarding sociodemographic characteristics, including gender identity and sexual orientation.

RESULTS: Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) supported a unidimensional factor structure for the SDS-3, and multi-group CFA (MGCFA) suggested that this factor structure was invariant across countries, languages, gender identities, and sexual orientations. Cronbach's α for the unidimensional score was 0.83 (range between 0.76 and 0.89), and McDonald's ω was 0.84 (range between 0.76 and 0.90). Participants who did not experience sexual problems had significantly lower SDS-3 total scores (M = 2.99; SD=2.54) compared to those who reported sexual problems (M = 5.60; SD=3.00), with a large effect size (Cohen's d = 1.01 [95 % CI=-1.03, -0.98]; p < 0.001).

CONCLUSION: The SDS-3 has a unidimensional factor structure and appears to be valid and reliable for measuring sexual distress among individuals from different countries, gender identities, and sexual orientations.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

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