Attitudes Towards Sexuality Scale (Fisher & Hall, 1988)

• Populations: Adolescents, young adults
• Age ranges: 12-20
• Languages: English, Chinese
• Countries: China; United States

Items

• Nudist camps should be made completely illegal.
• Abortion should be made available whenever a woman feels it would be the best decision.
• Information and advice about contraception (birth control) should be given to any individual who intends to have intercourse.
• Parents should be informed if their children under the age of eighteen have visited a clinic to obtain a contraceptive device.
• Our government should try harder to prevent the distribution of pornography.
• Prostitution should be legalized.
• Petting (a stimulating caress of any or all parts of the body) is immoral behavior unless the couple is married.
• Premarital sexual intercourse for young people is unacceptable to me.
• Sexual intercourse for unmarried young people is acceptable without affection existing if both partners agree.
• Homosexual behavior is an acceptable variation in sexual orientation.
• A person who catches a sexually transmitted disease is probably getting exactly what he/she deserves.
• A person’s sexual behavior is his/her own business, and nobody should make value judgments about it.
• Sexual intercourse should only occur between two people who are married to each other.

Responses

Items used a 5 point Likert-type scale, 1 = Strongly Disagree, 2 = Somewhat Disagree, 3 = Neutral, 4 = Somewhat Agree, 5 = Strongly Agree

Scoring

“Items 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, and 13 are reverse scored by assigning a score of 1 if 5 was marked, a score of 2 if 4 was marked, etc. Then the number of points is totaled. Scores can range from 13 to 65, with lower scores indicating greater conservatism about sexual matters and higher scores indicating greater permissiveness about sexual matters.” (Fisher, 2020)

Citations

• Terri D. Fisher & Richard G. Hall (1988) A scale for the comparison of the sexual attitudes of adolescents and their parents, Journal of Sex Research, 24:1, 90-100, DOI:10.1080/00224498809551400
• Fisher, T. D. (2020). Attitudes Toward Sexuality 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 (94-96). Routledge.
• Chen, Yu-ning, Hou, Chan-juan, & Yao, Shu-qiao (2013) Reliability and validity of The Attitudes Toward Sexuality Scale for Chinese adolescents. Chinese Journal of Clinical Psychology, 21, 1-4

Team comments

Please note that the items presented here are updated from original measure publication, per one of the original authors:
“Several of the terms used in the scale have dropped out of usage since its development. The exhibit indicates the newer terminology that researchers would likely wish to use.” (Fisher, 2020)  The original items can be found in Fisher and Hall (1998) p. 95