Proposal and validation of a short version of the Sexual Opinion Survey in the Spanish population

Aim: Erotophobia-erotophilia refers to the emotional reaction that people experience with sexual stimuli. The most frequently used instrument to evaluate this reaction is the Sexual Opinion Survey (SOS), composed of 21 items. Given the absence of studies that analyze its content validity and considering the lack of consensus about its factorial structure, this study has aimed to analyze its content validity in order to develop a short version using those items that best represent the erotophobia-erotophilia construct. Material and method: Five experts in the field of human sexuality assessed the content validity. A final sample of 3,218 heterosexual adults (1,555 men and 1,663 women), ages 18 to 84 years, selected from the general Spanish population using a non-probabilistic cluster procedure, responded to the SOS along with other self-reports to assess sexual assertiveness, sexual functioning, attitudes toward sexual fantasies, and sexual desire. Results: According to the expert's judgment, only 6 out of the 21 original items met the established criteria of the construct representativeness. The new 6-items short version (SOS-6) had a unidimensional structure and achieved adequate reliability (alpha=0.74) and good convergent validity with significant correlations with sexual assertiveness, sexual satisfaction, sexual desire, sexual functioning, and positive attitudes toward sexual fantasies. Furthermore, percentile rank scores for gender and age are proposed. Conclusions: The 6-items-SOS Spanish version is reliable and valid. (C) 2013 Asociacion Espanola de Andrologia, Medicina Sexual y Reproductiva. Published by Elsevier Espana, S.L. All rights reserved.