Attitudes about Sexual Relationship Rights (Berglas, 2013)

• Populations: Adolescents
• Age ranges: 12-16 (Age 12 <1%)
• Languages: English
• Countries: United States

Items

Subscales

• Sex Refusal: 5 Items
• Sex Engagement: 4 Items
• Relationship Autonomy: 5 Items

This measure has two forms, one intended for use relating to activities with a steady partner and one for activities with a casual partner.

Items

• Right to say no to sex
• Right to know if partner is having sex with someone else
• Right to stop having sex with partner at any time
• Right to insist on using condoms or birth control
• Right to insist that partner gets tested for STDs or HIV
• Right to say what they need or want in the relationship
• Right to ask about partner’s past sexual experiences
• Right to talk about what they want to do when having sex
• Right to end the relationship for any reason they choose
• Right to talk about condoms or birth control
• Right to tell partner they would like to have sex
• Right to talk about what feels good / doesn’t feel good during sex
• Right to have time away from their partner
• Right to have equal say in all decisions about sex
• Right to say no to sexual things that make them uncomfortable
• Right to refuse to have sex, without giving a reason why
• Right to stop what they’re doing during sex at any time

Please note that these items may not be shown precisely as worded during administration and were taken from an Item Means table when no full item list was reported. (Berglas, 2013)

Responses

Items used a 4 point Likert-type scale

Scoring

“All items are coded so that higher values indicate more positive attitudes about sexual relationship rights. No items are reverse coded. Scores for the overall 10-item scale and the two 5-item subscales are calculated as a mean scale score across the relevant items (Sex Refusal: items 1–5; Sex Engagement: items 6–10). Scale scores range from 1 to 4. Mean scores for participants in the validation sample 
were 3.23 (SD = .43, N = 655) for the full 10-item scale, 3.29 (SD = .52, N = 655) for the Sex Refusal subscale, and 3.17 (SD = .49, N = 651) for the Sex Engagement subscale” (Berglas et al., 2020)

Citations

• Berglas, N. (2013). Conceptualizing and Measuring a Rights-Based Approach to Sexuality Education [Doctoral Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley]. UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3kd4641d
• Berglas, N. F., Constantine, N. A., Jerman, P., & Rohrbach, L. A. (2020). Adolescents’ Attitudes About Sexual 
  Relationship Rights. In R. R. Milhausen, J. K. Sakaluk, T. D. Fischer, C. M. Davis, W. L. Yarber (Eds.), Handbook of sexuality-related measures, 4th edition (12-14). Routledge.