Sexological testing
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Sexuality can be inscribed in a multidimensional model comprising different aspects of human life: biology, reproduction, culture, entertainment, relationships and love.
In the last decades, a growing interest towards sexuality and a greater quest to acknowledge a “right to sexuality” has occurred both in society and individuals. The consequence of this evolution has been a renewed and more explicit call for intervention from those who suffer, or think they suffer from alterations of their sexual and relational sphere.
This has produced an increased attention of medicine and psychology towards sexual dysfunctions and the problems they cause in individuals and couples. Science has gradually adjusted already existing research tools, mostly used in other fields of clinical research, to the field of sexology, so completing and increasing the number of tools in the “toolkit” of various branches of sexological diagnosis.
Psychological measurements cannot be considered as accurate as physical ones (weight, height, mass, etc.), as the former evaluate those aspects and variables pertaining to an "individual" whose individuality refers to his/her own psychological, personological and environmental constituents: emotions, expressiveness, senses, feelings and experiences which can greatly vary according to the subjects and change in the short period or depending on different settings, even in the same individual.
What is expected of psychological measurements is "sufficient" accuracy and reliability, i.e. capability to express an indication or focus which clinicians can use as a “guideline” to rapidly and accurately deepen the aspects highlighted by the measurements and check them together with their patients. For this purpose, several statistical validation indexes of psychodiagnostic tests are provided: from standardization to various constructions of validity (internal, external, face, construct, convergent, content, discriminant, etc.).
There are several sexual dysfunctions and each of them has a different cause. Therefore, the field of sexology provides different psychological evaluation devices in order to examine the various aspects of the discomfort, problem or dysfunction, regardless of whether they are individual or relational ones.
The number of psychodiagnostic reactives is certainly wide and heterogeneous, nevertheless, the amount of tests specifically meant for the field of sexology is quite limited. The following list (in alphabetical order) is not exhaustive but shows the best known and/or most used reactives in the field of sexological and relational psychodiagnosis.
See also
