Adolescent Sexual Communication Scale (Widman et al., 2014)

• Populations: Adolescents
• Age ranges: 12-15
• Languages: English
• Countries: United States

Items

Item Stems and Items:

In the past year, how much have you talked to either of your parents about the following topics?

• Using condoms.
• Using other forms of birth control, like birth control pills.
• Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).
• HIV/AIDS.
• Getting pregnant/getting someone else pregnant.
• Waiting to have sex until you’re older or sexual abstinence.

In the past year, how much have you talked to your best friend about the following topics?

• Using condoms.
• Using other forms of birth control, like birth control pills.
• Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).
• HIV/AIDS.
• Getting pregnant/getting someone else pregnant.
• Waiting to have sex until you’re older or sexual abstinence.

In the past year, have you had a boyfriend/girlfriend or someone you liked “more than friends” who you have talked to or hung out with?

• Yes (We will call this person a dating partner for the next question)
• No (Skip to end of survey)

In the past year, how much have you talked to your dating partner about the following topics?

• Using condoms.
• Using other forms of birth control, like birth control pills.
• Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).
• HIV/AIDS.
• Getting pregnant/getting someone else pregnant.
• Waiting to have sex until you’re older or sexual abstinence.

Responses

Items used a 5 item ordinal response scale: Never talked about this, Talked about this 1 time, Talked about this 2 or 3 times, Talked about this 4 to 6 times, Talked about this 7+ times

Scoring

“Items are coded such that higher responses indicate more frequent communication. Scores can be calculated in two ways depending upon the research question. If an investigator is interested in understanding the average frequency of sexual health communication, they can create a mean score of the 6 items for each communication partner (i.e., parent, friend, dating partner). Alternatively, investigators may create a total score that represents the total number of sexual health topics that youth have discussed with each communication partner. To do this, each item should be dichotomized (0 = never discussed that item or 1 = discussed that item 1 time or more). Then a total sum score can be calculated (possible range = 0 – 6 topics discussed). This was the method we selected in our validation study (Widman et al., 2014) as we wished to compare communication topics between parents, best friends, and dating partners.” (Widman & Stewart, 2020)

Citations

Widman, L., Choukas-Bradley, S., Helms, S. W., Golin, C. E., & Prinstein, M. J. (2014). Sexual communication between early ado-lescents and their dating partners, parents, and best friends. Journal of Sex Research, 51, 731–741. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2013.843148

Widman, L., Stewart, J. L. (2020). Adolescent Sexual Communication Scale. In R. R. Milhausen, J. K. Sakaluk, T. D. Fischer, C. M. Davis, W. L. Yarber (Eds.), Handbook of sexuality-related measures, 4th edition (251-253). Routledge.