• Developed to evaluate the impact of counseling programs and sexual education for persons with SCI and their partners.
  • Considers both sexual behavior and sexual/non-sexual concerns, illustrating a client-centered questionnaire.
  • The SAIQ consists of 4 scales:
    • Sexual Information.
    • Sexual Behavior Acceptability.
    • Sexual Concerns.
    • Non-sexual Concerns.
  • Each subscale presents separate information:
    • Higher scores for scale I suggest individuals are knowledgeable about physiological aspects of sexual functioning.
    • Higher scores on scale II represents acceptance of sexual behaviors.
    • Higher scores on scale III indicates little concern about sexual functioning.
    • Higher scores on scale IV suggests considerable concern about non-sexual functioning.

Clinical Considerations

  • The SAIQ may prove to be a useful tool to evaluate the effectiveness of sexual counseling and education programs designed for individuals SCI. It may also be useful for identifying individuals who would benefit from such a program.
  • The questionnaire may require updating, as there has been a considerable increase in public awareness and understanding of issues such as erectile dysfunction since its publication in 1980.
  • The SAIQ is easy to complete and the phrasing is clear; however, the content may be culturally sensitive.

ICF Domain

Body Function ▶ Functions of the Reproductive System

Administration

  • Self-report questionnaire.
  • Administration and scoring of the tool takes approximately 10-15 minutes.

Number of Items

39

Equipment

None

Scoring

  • Scored using a 6-point Likert-scale (from ‘totally disagree/extremely concerned’ to ‘totally agree/not concerned’).
  • The subscales are scored independently of one another. Scale I is scored according to the number of items answered correctly and Scales II – IV by summing ratings across items.

Languages

English

Training Required

Staff training is required if the SAIQ is used as part of a counseling or training program then.

Availability

Can be found by contacting the author (Brockway JA; Dept of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Washington Medical School, Seattle, Washington).

# of studies reporting psychometric properties: 2

Interpretability

MCID: not established in SCI
SEM: not established in SCI
MDC: not established in SCI

  • Normative data for the SCI population are not available and no meaningful cut points have been established.
  • Published data for the SCI population is available for comparison (see Interpretability section of the Study Details sheet).

Reliability

  • Split-half reliability of the SAIQ subscales are:
    • High for Sexual Concern (r = 0.79-0.82).
    • High for Non-sexual Concern (r = 0.81-0.90).
    • Moderate to high for Sexual Information (r = 0.72-0.77).
    • Moderate for Sexual behavior acceptability (r = 0.47-0.68).
  • Test-retest reliability is moderate to high for SAIQ subscales (r = 0.69-0.91).

(Brockway & Steger 1981; Brockway et al. 1978)

Validity

Correlations between subscales of the SAIQ are as follows:

  • I and: II (r = 0.30), III (r = 0.27), IV (r = -0.29)
    Low
  • II and: III (r = 0.06-0.27), IV (r = -0.23-0.07).
    Low.
  • III and IV (r = -0.44-0.82).
    Low to high.
[Sexual Information (I), Sexual Behavior Acceptability (II), Sexual Concerns (III), and Non-Sexual Concerns (IV)]

(Brockway & Steger 1981; Brockway et al. 1978)

Responsiveness

  • Means are given for pre and post sex education and counseling.
  • A t-test for correlated means was used to evaluate score changes after the counseling; Sexual Information (t = 1.17), Sexual Behaviour Acceptability (t = 2.14), Sexual concern (t = 2.50), Non-sexual concern (t = 0.04).

(Brockway et al. 1978)

Floor/Ceiling Effect

No values were reported for the presence of floor/ceiling effects in the SAIQ for the SCI population.

Reviewer

Dr. Janice Eng, Marzena Zhou

Date Last Updated

24 August 2020

Brockway JA, Steger JC. Sexual attitude and information questionnaire: Reliability and validity in a spinal cord injured population. Sex Disabil 1981;4:49-60.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01102464?LI=true

Brockway JA, Steger JC, Berni R, Ost V, Williamson-Kirkland TE, Peck CL. Effectiveness of a sex education and counseling program for spinal cord injured patients. Sex Disabil 1978;1:127-136.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01101773?LI=true

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